Canadian Researcher: US Targeting Syria to Change Region's Geo-Political Reality
OTTAWA: Canadian writer and researcher Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya said that the encirclement of Syria has long been in the works since 2001, and that permanent NATO presence in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Syrian Accountability Act are part of this initiative, adding that this roadmap is based on a 1996 Israeli document aimed at controlling Syria. The document’s name is "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm."

In an article published on the Canadian website globalresearch.ca
Nazemroaya said that the 1996 Israeli document, which included prominent U.S. policy figures as authors, calls for “rolling back Syria” in 2000 or afterward. The roadmap outlines pushing the Syrians out of Lebanon, diverting the attention of Damascus by using an anti-Syrian opposition in Lebanon, and then destabilizing Syria with the help of Turkey and other Arab countries, in addition to creating the March 14 Alliance and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.

He said that the first step towards this was the war on Iraq and its balkanization, fomenting sectarian divisions as a means of conquering Syria and creating a regional alliance against it.

Nazemroaya noted that the U.S. initiated a naval build-up off the Syrian and Lebanese coasts, which is part of Washington’s standard scare tactics that it has used as a form of intimidation and psychological warfare against Iran, Syria, and the Resistance Bloc, all while the mainstream media networks controlled by Arab clients of the U.S. are focusing on the deployment of Russian naval vessels to Syria, which can be seen as a counter-move to NATO.

He also said that the city of al-Ramtha in Jordan is being used to launch attacks into Daraa and Syrian territory, adding that Turkish and Lebanese media said that France has sent its military trainers into Turkey and Lebanon to prepare conscripts against Syria, and that the so-called Free Syrian Army and other NATO-GCC front organizations are also using Turkish and Jordanian territory to stage raids into Syria, and Lebanon is also being used to smuggle weapon shipments into Syria.

Nazemroaya that there are companies that have not left Syria and are actually used to siphon money out of Syria, with the goal of preventing any money from going in, while they want to also drain the local economy as a catalyst to an internal implosion in Syria.

He said that, regarding Turkey, "Ankara has been playing a dirty game," as Turkey initially pretended to be neutral during the start of NATO’s war against Libya while it was helping the National Transitional Council in Benghazi, stressing that Erdogan's government does not care about the Syrian population but rather wants Syria to submit to Washington’s demands, adding that Turkey has been responsible for recruiting fighters against Syria.

"For several years Ankara has been silently trying to de-link Syria from Iran and to displace Iranian influence in the Middle East. Turkey has been working to promote itself and its image amongst the Arabs, but all along it has been a key component of the plans of Washington and NATO. At the same time, it has been upgrading its military capabilities in the Black Sea and on its borders with Iran and Syria," Nazemroaya wrote, adding that Turkey also agreed to upgrade Turkish bases for NATO troops.

He affirmed that it's no mere coincidence that Senator Joseph Lieberman started demanding at the start of 2011 that the Pentagon and NATO attack Syria and Iran, nor is it a coincidence that Tehran has been included in the recent Obama Administration sanctions imposed against Damascus, saying that Damascus is being targeted as a means of targeting Iran and, in broader terms, weakening Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing in the struggle for control over the Eurasian landmass.

Nazemroaya said that the U.S. leaving Iraq will cement the Resistance Bloc, dealing a major strategic blows to Israel and the U.S., stressing that Washington is working to create a new geo-political reality by eliminating Syria, in addition to activating the so-called “Coalition of the Moderate” that it created under George W. Bush Jr. and directing it against Iran, Syria, and their regional allies.

"For half a decade Washington has been directing a military arms build-up in the Middle East aimed at Iran and the Resistance Bloc," he said, noting that the U.S. sent massive arms shipments to countries in the region including Israel and started to openly discuss murdering figures, all of which constitutes a pathway towards possible military escalation that could go far beyond the boundaries of the Middle East and suck in Russia and China and their allies.

The Oded Yinon Plan

The following document pertaining to the formation of “Greater
Israel” constitutes the cornerstone of powerful Zionist factions within
the current Netanyahu government, the Likud party, as well as within the
Israeli military and intelligence establishment.According to the founding father of Zionism Theodore Herzl, “the
area of the Jewish State stretches: “From the Brook of Egypt to the
Euphrates.” According to Rabbi Fischmann, “The Promised Land extends
from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria
and Lebanon.”When
viewed in the current context, the war on Iraq, the 2006 war on
Lebanon, the 2011 war on Libya, the ongoing war on Syria, not to mention
the process of regime change in Egypt, must be understood in relation
to the Zionist Plan for the Middle East. The latter consists in
weakening and eventually fracturing neighboring Arab states as part of
an Israeli expansionist project. “Greater Israel” consists in an area extending from the Nile Valley to the Euphrates. The Zionist project supports the Jewish settlement movement. More
broadly it involves a policy of excluding Palestinians from Palestine
leading to the eventual annexation of both the West Bank and Gaza to the
State of Israel. Greater Israel would create a number of proxy States. It would
include parts of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the Sinai, as well as parts of
Iraq and Saudi Arabia. (See map).

“[The Yinon
plan] is an Israeli strategic plan to ensure Israeli regional
superiority. It insists and stipulates that Israel must reconfigure its
geo-political environment through the balkanization of the surrounding
Arab states into smaller and weaker states.

Israeli
strategists viewed Iraq as their biggest strategic challenge from an
Arab state. This is why Iraq was outlined as the centerpiece to the
balkanization of the Middle East and the Arab World. In Iraq, on the
basis of the concepts of the Yinon Plan, Israeli strategists have called
for the division of Iraq into a Kurdish state and two Arab states, one
for Shiite Muslims and the other for Sunni Muslims. The first step
towards establishing this was a war between Iraq and Iran, which the
Yinon Plan discusses.

The Atlantic, in 2008, and the U.S.
military’s Armed Forces Journal, in 2006, both published widely
circulated maps that closely followed the outline of the Yinon Plan.
Aside from a divided Iraq, which the Biden Plan also calls for, the
Yinon Plan calls for a divided Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria. The
partitioning of Iran, Turkey, Somalia, and Pakistan also all fall into
line with these views. The Yinon Plan also calls for dissolution in
North Africa and forecasts it as starting from Egypt and then spilling
over into Sudan, Libya, and the rest of the region.

Greater Israel” requires the breaking up of the existing Arab states into small states.

“The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel must 1) become an imperial regional power,
and 2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by
the dissolution of all existing Arab states. Small here will depend on
the ethnic or sectarian composition of each state. Consequently, the
Zionist hope is that sectarian-based states become Israel’s satellites
and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation… This is not a new
idea, nor does it surface for the first time in Zionist strategic
thinking. Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into smaller units has
been a recurrent theme.” (Yinon Plan, see below)

Viewed in this context, the war on Syria is part of the process
of Israeli territorial expansion. Israeli intelligence working hand in
glove with the US, Turkey and NATO is directly supportive of the Al
Qaeda terrorist mercenaries inside Syria. The Zionist Project also requires the destabilization of Egypt,
the creation of factional divisions within Egypt as instrumented by the
“Arab Spring” leading to the formation of a sectarian based State
dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, March 3, 2013

The Zionist Plan for the Middle East

Translated and edited by

Israel Shahak

The Israel of Theodore Herzl (1904) and of Rabbi Fischmann (1947)

In his Complete Diaries, Vol. II. p. 711, Theodore Herzl, the
founder of Zionism, says that the area of the Jewish State stretches:
“From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.”Rabbi Fischmann, member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine,
declared in his testimony to the U.N. Special Committee of Enquiry on 9
July 1947: “The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the
Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.”

from

Oded Yinon’s

“A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties”

The Association of Arab-American University Graduates finds it
compelling to inaugurate its new publication series, Special Documents,
with Oded Yinon’s article which appeared in Kivunim (Directions), the
journal of the Department of Information of the World Zionist
Organization. Oded Yinon is an Israeli journalist and was formerly
attached to the Foreign Ministry of Israel. To our knowledge, this
document is the most explicit, detailed and unambiguous statement to
date of the Zionist strategy in the Middle East. Furthermore, it stands
as an accurate representation of the “vision” for the entire Middle East
of the presently ruling Zionist regime of Begin, Sharon and Eitan. Its
importance, hence, lies not in its historical value but in the nightmare
which it presents.

2

The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel
must 1) become an imperial regional power, and 2) must effect the
division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all
existing Arab states. Small here will depend on the ethnic or sectarian
composition of each state. Consequently, the Zionist hope is that
sectarian-based states become Israel’s satellites and, ironically, its
source of moral legitimation.

3

This is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in
Zionist strategic thinking. Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into
smaller units has been a recurrent theme. This theme has been documented
on a very modest scale in the AAUG publication, Israel’s Sacred Terrorism
(1980), by Livia Rokach. Based on the memoirs of Moshe Sharett, former
Prime Minister of Israel, Rokach’s study documents, in convincing
detail, the Zionist plan as it applies to Lebanon and as it was prepared
in the mid-fifties.

4

The first massive Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1978 bore this
plan out to the minutest detail. The second and more barbaric and
encompassing Israeli invasion of Lebanon on June 6, 1982, aims to effect
certain parts of this plan which hopes to see not only Lebanon, but
Syria and Jordan as well, in fragments. This ought to make mockery of
Israeli public claims regarding their desire for a strong and
independent Lebanese central government. More accurately, they want a
Lebanese central government that sanctions their regional imperialist
designs by signing a peace treaty with them. They also seek acquiescence
in their designs by the Syrian, Iraqi, Jordanian and other Arab
governments as well as by the Palestinian people. What they want and
what they are planning for is not an Arab world, but a world of Arab
fragments that is ready to succumb to Israeli hegemony. Hence, Oded
Yinon in his essay, “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980′s,” talks about
“far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967″ that are
created by the “very stormy situation [that] surrounds Israel.”

5

The Zionist policy of displacing the Palestinians from Palestine
is very much an active policy, but is pursued more forcefully in times
of conflict, such as in the 1947-1948 war and in the 1967 war. An
appendix entitled ”Israel Talks of a New Exodus”
is included in this publication to demonstrate past Zionist dispersals
of Palestinians from their homeland and to show, besides the main
Zionist document we present, other Zionist planning for the
de-Palestinization of Palestine.

6

It is clear from the Kivunim document, published in February,
1982, that the “far-reaching opportunities” of which Zionist strategists
have been thinking are the same “opportunities” of which they are
trying to convince the world and which they claim were generated by
their June, 1982 invasion. It is also clear that the Palestinians were
never the sole target of Zionist plans, but the priority target since
their viable and independent presence as a people negates the essence of
the Zionist state. Every Arab state, however, especially those with
cohesive and clear nationalist directions, is a real target sooner or
later.

7

Contrasted with the detailed and unambiguous Zionist strategy
elucidated in this document, Arab and Palestinian strategy,
unfortunately, suffers from ambiguity and incoherence. There is no
indication that Arab strategists have internalized the Zionist plan in
its full ramifications. Instead, they react with incredulity and shock
whenever a new stage of it unfolds. This is apparent in Arab reaction,
albeit muted, to the Israeli siege of Beirut. The sad fact is that as
long as the Zionist strategy for the Middle East is not taken seriously
Arab reaction to any future siege of other Arab capitals will be the
same.Khalil Nakhleh

July 23, 1982

Foreward

by Israel Shahak

1

The following essay represents, in my opinion, the accurate and
detailed plan of the present Zionist regime (of Sharon and Eitan) for
the Middle East which is based on the division of the whole area into small states, and the dissolution of all the existing Arab states. I will comment on the military aspect ofthis plan in a concluding note. Here I want to draw the attention of the readers to several important points:

2

1. The idea that all the Arab states should be broken down,
by Israel, into small units, occurs again and again in Israeli strategic
thinking. For example, Ze’ev Schiff, the military correspondent of Ha’aretz
(and probably the most knowledgeable in Israel, on this topic) writes
about the “best” that can happen for Israeli interests in Iraq: “The
dissolution of Iraq into a Shi’ite state, a Sunni state and the
separation of the Kurdish part” (Ha’aretz 6/2/1982). Actually, this aspect of the plan is very old.

3

2. The strong connection with Neo-Conservative thought in the USA is very prominent, especially in the author’s notes. But,
while lip service is paid to the idea of the “defense of the West” from
Soviet power, the real aim of the author, and of the present Israeli
establishment is clear: To make an Imperial Israel into a world power.
In other words, the aim of Sharon is to deceive the Americans after he
has deceived all the rest.

4

3. It is obvious that much of the relevant data, both in the notes and in the text, is garbled or omitted, such as the financial help of the U.S. to Israel. Much of it is pure fantasy. But, the plan is not to beregarded as not influential, or as not capable of realization for a short time. The plan follows faithfully the geopolitical ideas current in Germany of 1890-1933, which were swallowed whole by Hitler and the Nazi movement, and determined their aims for East Europe.
Those aims, especially the division of the existing states, were
carried out in 1939-1941, and only an alliance on the global scale
prevented their consolidation for a period of time.

5

The notes by the author follow the text. To avoid confusion, I did
not add any notes of my own, but have put the substance of them into
this foreward and the conclusion at the end. I have, however, emphasized
some portions of the text.Israel ShahakJune 13, 1982

At the outset of the nineteen eighties the State of Israel is in need
of a new perspective as to its place, its aims and national targets, at
home and abroad. This need has become even more vital due to a number
of central processes which the country, the region and the world are
undergoing. We are living today in the early stages of a new epoch in
human history which is not at all similar to its predecessor, and its
characteristics are totally different from what we have hitherto known.
That is why we need an understanding of the central processes which
typify this historical epoch on the one hand, and on the other hand we
need a world outlook and an operational strategy in accordance with the
new conditions. The existence, prosperity and steadfastness of the
Jewish state will depend upon its ability to adopt a new framework for
its domestic and foreign affairs.

2

This epoch is characterized by several traits which we can already
diagnose, and which symbolize a genuine revolution in our present
lifestyle. The dominant process is the breakdown of the rationalist,
humanist outlook as the major cornerstone supporting the life and
achievements of Western civilization since the Renaissance. The
political, social and economic views which have emanated from this
foundation have been based on several “truths” which are presently
disappearing–for example, the view that man as an individual is the
center of the universe and everything exists in order to fulfill his
basic material needs. This position is being invalidated in the present
when it has become clear that the amount of resources in the cosmos does
not meet Man’s requirements, his economic needs or his demographic
constraints. In a world in which there are four billion human beings and
economic and energy resources which do not grow proportionally to meet
the needs of mankind, it is unrealistic to expect to fulfill the main
requirement of Western Society,1
i.e., the wish and aspiration for boundless consumption. The view that
ethics plays no part in determining the direction Man takes, but rather
his material needs do–that view is becoming prevalent today as we see a
world in which nearly all values are disappearing. We are losing the
ability to assess the simplest things, especially when they concern the
simple question of what is Good and what is Evil.

3

The vision of man’s limitless aspirations and abilities shrinks in
the face of the sad facts of life, when we witness the break-up of world
order around us. The view which promises liberty and freedom to mankind
seems absurd in light of the sad fact that three fourths of the human
race lives under totalitarian regimes. The views concerning equality and
social justice have been transformed by socialism and especially by
Communism into a laughing stock. There is no argument as to the truth of
these two ideas, but it is clear that they have not been put into
practice properly and the majority of mankind has lost the liberty, the
freedom and the opportunity for equality and justice. In this nuclear
world in which we are (still) living in relative peace for thirty years,
the concept of peace and coexistence among nations has no meaning when a
superpower like the USSR holds a military and political doctrine of the
sort it has: that not only is a nuclear war possible and necessary in
order to achieve the ends of Marxism, but that it is possible to survive
after it, not to speak of the fact that one can be victorious in it.2

4

The essential concepts of human society, especially those of the
West, are undergoing a change due to political, military and economic
transformations. Thus, the nuclear and conventional might of the USSR
has transformed the epoch that has just ended into the last respite
before the great saga that will demolish a large part of our world in a
multi-dimensional global war, in comparison with which the past world
wars will have been mere child’s play. The power of nuclear as well as
of conventional weapons, their quantity, their precision and quality
will turn most of our world upside down within a few years, and we must
align ourselves so as to face that in Israel. That is, then, the main
threat to our existence and that of the Western world.3
The war over resources in the world, the Arab monopoly on oil, and the
need of the West to import most of its raw materials from the Third
World, are transforming the world we know, given that one of the major
aims of the USSR is to defeat the West by gaining control over the
gigantic resources in the Persian Gulf and in the southern part of
Africa, in which the majority of world minerals are located. We can
imagine the dimensions of the global confrontation which will face us in
the future.

5

The Gorshkov doctrine calls for Soviet control of the oceans and
mineral rich areas of the Third World. That together with the present
Soviet nuclear doctrine which holds that it is possible to manage, win
and survive a nuclear war, in the course of which the West’s military
might well be destroyed and its inhabitants made slaves in the service
of Marxism-Leninism, is the main danger to world peace and to our own
existence. Since 1967, the Soviets have transformed Clausewitz’ dictum
into “War is the continuation of policy in nuclear means,” and made it
the motto which guides all their policies. Already today they are busy
carrying out their aims in our region and throughout the world, and the
need to face them becomes the major element in our country’s security
policy and of course that of the rest of the Free World. That is our
major foreign challenge.4

6

The Arab Moslem world, therefore, is not the major strategic problem
which we shall face in the Eighties, despite the fact that it carries
the main threat against Israel, due to its growing military might. This
world, with its ethnic minorities, its factions and internal crises,
which is astonishingly self-destructive, as we can see in Lebanon, in
non-Arab Iran and now also in Syria, is unable to deal successfully with
its fundamental problems and does not therefore constitute a real
threat against the State of Israel in the long run, but only in the
short run where its immediate military power has great import. In the
long run, this world will be unable to exist within its present
framework in the areas around us without having to go through genuine
revolutionary changes. The Moslem Arab World is built like a temporary
house of cards put together by foreigners (France and Britain in the
Nineteen Twenties), without the wishes and desires of the inhabitants
having been taken into account. It was arbitrarily divided into 19
states, all made of combinations of minorites and ethnic groups which
are hostile to one another, so that every Arab Moslem state nowadays
faces ethnic social destruction from within, and in some a civil war is
already raging.5 Most of the Arabs, 118 million out of 170 million, live in Africa, mostly in Egypt (45 million today).

7

Apart from Egypt, all the Maghreb states are made up of a mixture of
Arabs and non-Arab Berbers. In Algeria there is already a civil war
raging in the Kabile mountains between the two nations in the country.
Morocco and Algeria are at war with each other over Spanish Sahara, in
addition to the internal struggle in each of them. Militant Islam
endangers the integrity of Tunisia and Qaddafi organizes wars which are
destructive from the Arab point of view, from a country which is
sparsely populated and which cannot become a powerful nation. That is
why he has been attempting unifications in the past with states that are
more genuine, like Egypt and Syria. Sudan, the most torn apart state in
the Arab Moslem world today is built upon four groups hostile to each
other, an Arab Moslem Sunni minority which rules over a majority of
non-Arab Africans, Pagans, and Christians. In Egypt there is a Sunni
Moslem majority facing a large minority of Christians which is dominant
in upper Egypt: some 7 million of them, so that even Sadat, in his
speech on May 8, expressed the fear that they will want a state of their
own, something like a “second” Christian Lebanon in Egypt.

8

All the Arab States east of Israel are torn apart, broken up and
riddled with inner conflict even more than those of the Maghreb. Syria
is fundamentally no different from Lebanon except in the strong military
regime which rules it. But the real civil war taking place nowadays
between the Sunni majority and the Shi’ite Alawi ruling minority (a mere
12% of the population) testifies to the severity of the domestic
trouble.

9

Iraq is, once again, no different in essence from its neighbors,
although its majority is Shi’ite and the ruling minority Sunni.
Sixty-five percent of the population has no say in politics, in which an
elite of 20 percent holds the power. In addition there is a large
Kurdish minority in the north, and if it weren’t for the strength of the
ruling regime, the army and the oil revenues, Iraq’s future state would
be no different than that of Lebanon in the past or of Syria today. The
seeds of inner conflict and civil war are apparent today already,
especially after the rise of Khomeini to power in Iran, a leader whom
the Shi’ites in Iraq view as their natural leader.

10

All the Gulf principalities and Saudi Arabia are built upon a
delicate house of sand in which there is only oil. In Kuwait, the
Kuwaitis constitute only a quarter of the population. In Bahrain, the
Shi’ites are the majority but are deprived of power. In the UAE,
Shi’ites are once again the majority but the Sunnis are in power. The
same is true of Oman and North Yemen. Even in the Marxist South Yemen
there is a sizable Shi’ite minority. In Saudi Arabia half the population
is foreign, Egyptian and Yemenite, but a Saudi minority holds power.

11

Jordan is in reality Palestinian, ruled by a Trans-Jordanian Bedouin
minority, but most of the army and certainly the bureaucracy is now
Palestinian. As a matter of fact Amman is as Palestinian as Nablus. All
of these countries have powerful armies, relatively speaking. But there
is a problem there too. The Syrian army today is mostly Sunni with an
Alawi officer corps, the Iraqi army Shi’ite with Sunni commanders. This
has great significance in the long run, and that is why it will not be
possible to retain the loyalty of the army for a long time except where
it comes to the only common denominator: The hostility towards Israel,
and today even that is insufficient.

12

Alongside the Arabs, split as they are, the other Moslem states share
a similar predicament. Half of Iran’s population is comprised of a
Persian speaking group and the other half of an ethnically Turkish
group. Turkey’s population comprises a Turkish Sunni Moslem majority,
some 50%, and two large minorities, 12 million Shi’ite Alawis and 6
million Sunni Kurds. In Afghanistan there are 5 million

Shi’ites who constitute one third of the population. In Sunni
Pakistan there are 15 million Shi’ites who endanger the existence of
that state.

13

This national ethnic minority picture extending from Morocco to India
and from Somalia to Turkey points to the absence of stability and a
rapid degeneration in the entire region. When this picture is added to
the economic one, we see how the entire region is built like a house of
cards, unable to withstand its severe problems.

14

In this giant and fractured world there are a few wealthy groups and a
huge mass of poor people. Most of the Arabs have an average yearly
income of 300 dollars. That is the situation in Egypt, in most of the
Maghreb countries except for Libya, and in Iraq. Lebanon is torn apart
and its economy is falling to pieces. It is a state in which there is no
centralized power, but only 5 de facto sovereign authorities (Christian
in the north, supported by the Syrians and under the rule of the
Franjieh clan, in the East an area of direct Syrian conquest, in the
center a Phalangist controlled Christian enclave, in the south and up to
the Litani river a mostly Palestinian region controlled by the PLO and
Major Haddad’s state of Christians and half a million Shi’ites). Syria
is in an even graver situation and even the assistance she will obtain
in the future after the unification with Libya will not be sufficient
for dealing with the basic problems of existence and the maintenance of a
large army. Egypt is in the worst situation: Millions are on the verge
of hunger, half the labor force is unemployed, and housing is scarce in
this most densely populated area of the world. Except for the army,
there is not a single department operating efficiently and the state is
in a permanent state of bankruptcy and depends entirely on American
foreign assistance granted since the peace.6

15

In the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Egypt there is the
largest accumulation of money and oil in the world, but those enjoying
it are tiny elites who lack a wide base of support and self-confidence,
something that no army can guarantee.7
The Saudi army with all its equipment cannot defend the regime from
real dangers at home or abroad, and what took place in Mecca in 1980 is
only an example. A sad and very stormy situation surrounds Israel and
creates challenges for it, problems, risks but also far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967. Chances are that opportunities missed at that timewill become achievable in the Eighties to an extent and along dimensions which we cannot even imagine today.

16

The “peace” policy and the return of territories, through a
dependence upon the US, precludes the realization of the new option
created for us. Since 1967, all the governments of Israel have tied our
national aims down to narrow political needs, on the one hand, and on
the other to destructive opinions at home which neutralized our
capacities both at home and abroad. Failing to take steps towards the
Arab population in the new territories, acquired in the course of a war
forced upon us, is the major strategic error committed by Israel on the
morning after the Six Day War. We could have saved ourselves all the
bitter and dangerous conflict since then if we had given Jordan to the
Palestinians who live west of the Jordan river. By doing that we would
have neutralized the Palestinian problem which we nowadays face, and to
which we have found solutions that are really no solutions at all, such
as territorial compromise or autonomy which amount, in fact, to the same
thing.8
Today, we suddenly face immense opportunities for transforming the
situation thoroughly and this we must do in the coming decade, otherwise
we shall not survive as a state.

17

In the course of the Nineteen Eighties, the State of Israel will have
to go through far-reaching changes in its political and economic regime
domestically, along with radical changes in its foreign policy, in
order to stand up to the global and regional challenges of this new
epoch. The loss of the Suez Canal oil fields, of the immense potential
of the oil, gas and other natural resources in the Sinai peninsula which
is geomorphologically identical to the rich oil-producing countries in
the region, will result in an energy drain in the near future and will
destroy our domestic economy: one quarter of our present GNP as well as
one third of the budget is used for the purchase of oil.9 The search for raw materials in the Negev and on the coast will not, in the near future, serve to alter that state of affairs.

18

(Regaining) the Sinai peninsula with its present and potential resources is therefore a political prioritywhich is obstructed by the Camp David and the peace agreements. The fault for that lies of course withthe
present Israeli government and the governments which paved the road to
the policy of territorial compromise, the Alignment governments since
1967. The Egyptians will not need to keep the peace treaty after the
return of the Sinai, and they will do all they can to return to the fold
of the Arab world and to the USSR in order to gain support and military
assistance. American aid is guaranteed only for a short while, for the
terms of the peace and the weakening of the U.S. both at home and abroad
will bring about a reduction in aid. Without oil and the income from
it, with the present enormous expenditure, we will not be able to get
through 1982 under the present conditions and we will have to act in order toreturn
the situation to the status quo which existed in Sinai prior to Sadat’s
visit and the mistaken peace agreement signed with him in March 1979.10

19

Israel has two major routes through which to realize this purpose,
one direct and the other indirect. The direct option is the less
realistic one because of the nature of the regime and government in
Israel as well as the wisdom of Sadat who obtained our withdrawal from
Sinai, which was, next to the war of 1973, his major achievement since
he took power. Israel will not unilaterally break the treaty, neither
today, nor in 1982, unless it is very hard pressed economically and
politically and Egypt provides Israelwith the excuse to take the Sinai back into our hands for the fourth time in our short history. What is lefttherefore, is the indirect option. The economic situation in Egypt, the nature of the regime and its pan-

Arab policy, will bring about a situation after April 1982 in which Israel will be forced to act directly or indirectly in order to regain control over Sinai as a strategic, economic and energy reserve for the longrun. Egypt does not constitute a military strategic problem due to its internal conflicts and it could bedriven back to the post 1967 war situation in no more than one day.11

20

The myth of Egypt as the strong leader of the Arab World was
demolished back in 1956 and definitely did not survive 1967, but our
policy, as in the return of the Sinai, served to turn the myth into
“fact.” In reality, however, Egypt’s power in proportion both to Israel
alone and to the rest of the Arab World has gone down about 50 percent
since 1967. Egypt is no longer the leading political power in the Arab
World and is economically on the verge of a crisis. Without foreign
assistance the crisis will come tomorrow.12
In the short run, due to the return of the Sinai, Egypt will gain
several advantages at our expense, but only in the short run until 1982,
and that will not change the balance of power to its benefit, and will
possibly bring about its downfall. Egypt, in its present domestic
political picture, is already a corpse, all the more so if we take into
account the growing Moslem-Christian rift. BreakingEgypt
down territorially into distinct geographical regions is the political
aim of Israel in the Nineteen Eighties on its Western front.

21

Egypt is divided and torn apart into many foci of authority. If Egypt
falls apart, countries like Libya, Sudan or even the more distant
states will not continue to exist in their present form and will join thedownfall
and dissolution of Egypt. The vision of a Christian Coptic State in
Upper Egypt alongside a number of weak states with very localized power
and without a centralized government as to date, is the key to a
historical development which was only set back by the peace agreement
but which seems inevitable in the long run.13

22

The Western front, which on the surface appears more problematic, is
in fact less complicated than the Eastern front, in which most of the
events that make the headlines have been taking place recently.
Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precendent for the entire Arab worldincluding
Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula and is already following
that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically
or religiously unqiue areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary
target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of
the military power of those states serves as the primary short term
target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and
religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon,
so that there will be a Shi’ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni
state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its
northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, andcertainly in the Hauran and in northern Jordan. This state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area in the long run, and that aim is already within our reach today.14

23

Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate forIsrael’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger thanSyria.
In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest
threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause
its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a
wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and willshorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman timesis
possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major
cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi’ite areas in the south will
separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the
present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization.15

24

The entire Arabian peninsula is a natural candidate for dissolution
due to internal and external pressures, and the matter is inevitable
especially in Saudi Arabia. Regardless of whether its economic might
based on oil remains intact or whether it is diminished in the long run,
the internal rifts and breakdowns are a clear and natural development
in light of the present political structure.16

25

Jordan constitutes an immediate strategic target in the short run but not in the long run, for it does notconstitute a real threat in the long run after its dissolution, the termination of the lengthy rule of King Hussein and the transfer of power to the Palestinians in the short run.

26

There is no chance that Jordan will continue to exist in its present
structure for a long time, and Israel’s policy, both in war and in
peace, ought to be directed at the liquidation of Jordan under the
present regime and the transfer of power to the Palestinian majority.
Changing the regime east of the river will also cause the termination of the problem of the territories densely populated with Arabs west of theJordan.
Whether in war or under conditions of peace, emigration from the
territories and economic demographic freeze in them, are the guarantees
for the coming change on both banks of the river, and we ought to be
active in order to accelerate this process in the nearest future. The autonomy plan oughtalso
to be rejected, as well as any compromise or division of the
territories for, given the plans of the PLO and those of the Israeli
Arabs themselves, the Shefa’amr plan of September 1980, it is not
possible to go on living in this country in the present situation
without separating the two nations, the Arabs to Jordan and the Jews to
the areas west of the river. Genuine coexistence and peace will reign over theland
only when the Arabs understand that without Jewish rule between the
Jordan and the sea they will have neither existence nor security. A
nation of their own and security will be theirs only in Jordan.17

27

Within Israel the distinction between the areas of ’67 and the
territories beyond them, those of ’48, has always been meaningless for
Arabs and nowadays no longer has any significance for us. The problem
should be seen in its entirety without any divisions as of ’67. It
should be clear, under any future political situation or military
constellation, that the solution of the problem of the indigenous Arabs will come only when they recognize the existence of Israel in secure borders up to the Jordan river andbeyond it, as our existential need in this difficult epoch, the nuclear epoch which we shall soon enter. Itis
no longer possible to live with three fourths of the Jewish population
on the dense shoreline which is so dangerous in a nuclear epoch.

28

Dispersal of the population is therefore a domestic strategic aim of
the highest order; otherwise, we shall cease to exist within any
borders. Judea, Samaria and the Galilee are our sole guarantee for
national existence, and if we do not become the majority in the mountain
areas, we shall not rule in the country and we shall be like the
Crusaders, who lost this country which was not theirs anyhow, and in
which they were foreigners to begin with. Rebalancing the country
demographically, strategically and economically is the highest and most
central aim today. Taking hold of the mountain watershed from Beersheba
to the Upper Galilee is the national aim generated by the major
strategic consideration which is settling the mountainous part of the
country that is empty of Jews today.l8

29

Realizing our aims on the Eastern front depends first on the
realization of this internal strategic objective. The transformation of
the political and economic structure, so as to enable the realization of
these strategic aims, is the key to achieving the entire change. We
need to change from a centralized economy in which the government is
extensively involved, to an open and free market as well as to switch
from depending upon the U.S. taxpayer to developing, with our own hands,
of a genuine productive economic infrastructure. If we are not able to
make this change freely and voluntarily, we shall be forced into it by
world developments, especially in the areas of economics, energy, and
politics, and by our own growing isolation.l9

30

From a military and strategic point of view, the West led by the U.S.
is unable to withstand the global pressures of the USSR throughout the
world, and Israel must therefore stand alone in the Eighties, without
any foreign assistance, military or economic, and this is within our capacities today, with nocompromises.20
Rapid changes in the world will also bring about a change in the
condition of world Jewry to which Israel will become not only a last
resort but the only existential option. We cannot assume that U.S. Jews,
and the communities of Europe and Latin America will continue to exist
in the present form in the future.21

31

Our existence in this country itself is certain, and there is no
force that could remove us from here either forcefully or by treachery
(Sadat’s method). Despite the difficulties of the mistaken “peace”
policy and the problem of the Israeli Arabs and those of the territories, we can effectively deal with these problems in the foreseeable future.

Conclusion

1

Three important points have to be clarified in order to be able to
understand the significant possibilities of realization of this Zionist
plan for the Middle East, and also why it had to be published.

2

The Military Background of The Plan

The military conditions of this plan have not been mentioned above,
but on the many occasions where something very like it is being
“explained” in closed meetings to members of the Israeli Establishment,
this point is clarified. It is assumed that the Israeli military forces,
in all their branches, are insufficient for the actual work of
occupation of such wide territories as discussed above. In fact, even in
times of intense Palestinian “unrest” on the West Bank, the forces of
the Israeli Army are stretched out too much. The answer to that is the
method of ruling by means of “Haddad forces” or of “Village
Associations” (also known as “Village Leagues”): local forces under
“leaders” completely dissociated from the population, not having even
any feudal or party structure (such as the Phalangists have, for
example). The “states” proposed by Yinon are “Haddadland” and “Village
Associations,” and their armed forces will be, no doubt, quite similar.
In addition, Israeli military superiority in such a situation will be
much greater than it is even now, so that any movement of revolt will be
“punished” either by mass humiliation as in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, or by bombardment and obliteration of cities, as in Lebanon now
(June 1982), or by both. In order to ensure this, the plan, as
explained orally, calls for the establishment of Israeli garrisons in
focal places between the mini states, equipped with the necessary mobile
destructive forces. In fact, we have seen something like this in
Haddadland and we will almost certainly soon see the first example of
this system functioning either in South Lebanon or in all Lebanon.

3

It is obvious that the above military assumptions, and the whole plan
too, depend also on the Arabs continuing to be even more divided than
they are now, and on the lack of any truly progressive mass movement
among them. It may be that those two conditions will be removed only
when the plan will be well advanced, with consequences which can not be
foreseen.

4

Why it is necessary to publish this in Israel?

The reason for publication is the dual nature of the Israeli-Jewish
society: A very great measure of freedom and democracy, specially for
Jews, combined with expansionism and racist discrimination. In such a
situation the Israeli-Jewish elite (for the masses follow the TV and
Begin’s speeches) has to bepersuaded. The first steps in the process of persuasion are oral, as indicated above, but a time comes inwhich
it becomes inconvenient. Written material must be produced for the
benefit of the more stupid “persuaders” and “explainers” (for example
medium-rank officers, who are, usually, remarkably stupid). They then
“learn it,” more or less, and preach to others. It should be remarked
that Israel, and even the Yishuv from the Twenties, has always
functioned in this way. I myself well remember how (before I was “in
opposition”) the necessity of war with was explained to me and others a
year before the 1956 war, and the necessity of conquering “the rest of
Western Palestine when we will have the opportunity” was explained in
the years 1965-67.

5

Why is it assumed that there is no special risk from the outside in the publication of such plans?

Such risks can come from two sources, so long as the principled
opposition inside Israel is very weak (a situation which may change as a
consequence of the war on Lebanon) : The Arab World, including the
Palestinians, and the United States. The Arab World has shown itself so
far quite incapable of a detailed and rational analysis of
Israeli-Jewish society, and the Palestinians have been, on the average,
no better than the rest. In such a situation, even those who are
shouting about the dangers of Israeli expansionism (which are real
enough) are doing this not because of factual and detailed knowledge,
but because of belief in myth. A good example is the very persistent
belief in the non-existent writing on the wall of the Knesset of the
Biblical verse about the Nile and the Euphrates. Another example is the
persistent, and completely false declarations, which were made by some
of the most important Arab leaders, that the two blue stripes of the
Israeli flag symbolize the Nile and the Euphrates, while in fact they
are taken from the stripes of the Jewish praying shawl (Talit). The
Israeli specialists assume that, on the whole, the Arabs will pay no
attention to their serious discussions of the future, and the Lebanon
war has proved them right. So why should they not continue with their
old methods of persuading other Israelis?

6

In the United States a very similar situation exists, at least until
now. The more or less serious commentators take their information about
Israel, and much of their opinions about it, from two sources. The first
is from articles in the “liberal” American press, written almost
totally by Jewish admirers of Israel who, even if they are critical of
some aspects of the Israeli state, practice loyally what Stalin used to
call “the constructive criticism.” (In fact those among them who claim
also to be “Anti-Stalinist” are in reality more Stalinist than Stalin,
with Israel being their god which has not yet failed). In the framework
of such critical worship it must be assumed that Israel has always “good
intentions” and only “makes mistakes,” and therefore such a plan would
not be a matter for discussion–exactly as the Biblical genocides
committed by Jews are not mentioned. The other source of information, TheJerusalem Post, has similar policies. So long, therefore, as the situation exists in which Israel is really a “closed society” to the rest of the world, because the world wants to close its eyes, the publication and even the beginning of the realization of such a plan is realistic and feasible.

Israel Shahak
June 17, 1982 JerusalemAbout the TranslatorIsrael Shahak is a professor of organic chemistly at Hebrew
University in Jerusalem and the chairman of the Israeli League for Human
and Civil Rights. He published The Shahak Papers, collections of key articles from the Hebrew press, and is the author of numerous articles and books, among them Non-Jewin the Jewish State. His latest book is Israel’s Global Role: Weapons for Repression, published by theAAUG in 1982. Israel Shahak: (1933-2001)Notes1. American Universities Field Staff.
Report No.33, 1979. According to this research, the population of the
world will be 6 billion in the year 2000. Today’s world population can
be broken down as follows: China, 958 million; India, 635 million; USSR,
261 million; U.S., 218 million Indonesia, 140 million; Brazil and
Japan, 110 million each. According to the figures of the U.N. Population
Fund for 1980, there will be, in 2000, 50 cities with a population of
over 5 million each. The population ofthp;Third World will then be 80%
of the world population. According to Justin Blackwelder, U.S. Census
Office chief, the world population will not reach 6 billion because of
hunger.2. Soviet nuclear policy has been well summarized by two American Sovietologists: Joseph D. Douglas and Amoretta M. Hoeber, Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War,
(Stanford, Ca., Hoover Inst. Press, 1979). In the Soviet Union tens and
hundreds of articles and books are published each year which detail the
Soviet doctrine for nuclear war and there is a great deal of
documentation translated into English and published by the U.S. Air
Force,including USAF: Marxism-Leninism on War and the Army: The Soviet View, Moscow, 1972; USAF: The Armed Forces ofthe Soviet State. Moscow, 1975, by Marshal A. Grechko. The basic Soviet approach to the matter is presented in thebook by Marshal Sokolovski published in 1962 in Moscow: Marshal V. D. Sokolovski, Military Strategy, SovietDoctrine and Concepts(New York, Praeger, 1963).3. A picture of Soviet intentions in various areas of the world can be drawn from the book by Douglas and Hoeber, ibid. For additional material see: Michael Morgan, “USSR’s Minerals as Strategic Weapon in the Future,” Defense and Foreign Affairs, Washington, D.C., Dec. 1979.4. Admiral of the Fleet Sergei Gorshkov, Sea Power and the State, London, 1979. Morgan, loc. cit. General George S. Brown (USAF) C-JCS, Statement to the Congress on the Defense Posture of the United States For Fiscal Year1979, p. 103; National Security Council, Review of Non-Fuel Mineral Policy, (Washington, D.C. 1979,); DrewMiddleton, The New York Times, (9/15/79); Time, 9/21/80.

5. Elie Kedourie, “The End of the Ottoman Empire,” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 3, No.4, 1968.6. Al-Thawra, Syria 12/20/79, Al-Ahram,12/30/79, Al Ba’ath,
Syria, 5/6/79. 55% of the Arabs are 20 years old and younger, 70% of
the Arabs live in Africa, 55% of the Arabs under 15 are unemployed, 33%
live in urban areas, Oded Yinon, “Egypt’s Population Problem,” The Jerusalem Quarterly, No. 15, Spring 1980.7. E. Kanovsky, “Arab Haves and Have Nots,” The Jerusalem Quarterly, No.1, Fall 1976, Al Ba’ath, Syria, 5/6/79.8.
In his book, former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said that the Israeli
government is in fact responsible for the design of American policy in
the Middle East, after June ’67, because of its own indecisiveness as to
the future of the territories and the inconsistency in its positions
since it established the background for Resolution 242 and certainly
twelve years later for the Camp David agreements and the peace treaty
with Egypt. According to Rabin, on June 19, 1967, President Johnson sent
a letter to Prime Minister Eshkol in which he did not mention anything
about withdrawal from the new territories but exactly on the same day
the government resolved to return territories in exchange for peace.
After the Arab resolutions in Khartoum (9/1/67) the government altered
its position but contrary to its decision of June 19, did not notify the
U.S. of the alteration and the U.S. continued to support 242 in the
Security Council on the basis of its earlier understanding that Israel
is prepared to return territories. At that point it was already too late
to change the U.S. position and Israel’s policy. From here the way was
opened to peace agreements on the basis of 242 as was later agreed upon
in Camp David. See Yitzhak Rabin. Pinkas Sherut, (Ma’ariv 1979) pp. 226-227.9. Foreign and Defense Committee Chairman Prof. Moshe Arens argued in an interview (Ma ‘ariv,10/3/80)
that the Israeli government failed to prepare an economic plan before
the Camp David agreements and was itself surprised by the cost of the
agreements, although already during the negotiations it was possible to
calculate the heavy price and the serious error involved in not having
prepared the economic grounds for peace.The former Minister of Treasury, Mr.
Yigal Holwitz, stated that if it were not for the withdrawal from the
oil fields, Israel would have a positive balance of payments (9/17/80).
That same person said two years earlier that the government of Israel
(from which he withdrew) had placed a noose around his neck. He was
referring to the Camp David agreements (Ha’aretz, 11/3/78). In
the course of the whole peace negotiations neither an expert nor an
economics advisor was consulted, and the Prime Minister himself, who
lacks knowledge and expertise in economics, in a mistaken initiative,
asked the U.S. to give us a loan rather than a grant, due to his wish to
maintain our respect and the respect of the U.S. towards us. See Ha’aretz1/5/79. Jerusalem Post, 9/7/79. Prof Asaf Razin, formerly a senior consultant in the Treasury, strongly criticized the conduct of the negotiations; Ha’aretz, 5/5/79. Ma’ariv, 9/7/79. As to matters concerning the oil fields and Israel’s energy crisis, see the interview with Mr. EitanEisenberg, a government advisor on these matters, Ma’arive Weekly,
12/12/78. The Energy Minister, who personally signed the Camp David
agreements and the evacuation of Sdeh Alma, has since emphasized the
seriousness of our condition from the point of view of oil supplies more
than once…see Yediot Ahronot, 7/20/79. Energy Minister Modai
even admitted that the government did not consult him at all on the
subject of oil during the Camp David and Blair House negotiations. Ha’aretz, 8/22/79. 10.
Many sources report on the growth of the armaments budget in Egypt and
on intentions to give the army preference in a peace epoch budget over
domestic needs for which a peace was allegedly obtained. See former
Prime Minister Mamduh Salam in an interview 12/18/77, Treasury Minister
Abd El Sayeh in an interview 7/25/78, and the paper Al Akhbar,
12/2/78 which clearly stressed that the military budget will receive
first priority, despite the peace. This is what former Prime Minister
Mustafa Khalil has stated in his cabinet’s programmatic document which
was presented to Parliament, 11/25/78. See English translation, ICA,
FBIS, Nov. 27. 1978, pp. D 1-10.

According to these sources, Egypt’s
military budget increased by 10% between fiscal 1977 and 1978, and the
process still goes on. A Saudi source divulged that the Egyptians plan
to increase their militmy budget by 100% in the next two years; Ha’aretz, 2/12/79 and Jerusalem Post, 1/14/79. 11. Most of the economic estimates threw doubt on Egypt’s ability to reconstruct its economy by 1982. See Economic Intelligence Unit, 1978 Supplement, “The Arab Republic of Egypt”; E. Kanovsky, “Recent EconomicDevelopments in the Middle East,” Occasional Papers, The Shiloah Institution, June 1977; Kanovsky, “The Egyptian Economy Since the Mid-Sixties, The Micro Sectors,” Occasional Papers, June 1978; Robert McNamara, President of World Bank, as reported in Times, London, 1/24/78. 12.
See the comparison made by the researeh of the Institute for Strategic
Studies in London, and research camed out in the Center for Strategic
Studies of Tel Aviv University, as well as the research by the British
scientist, Denis Champlin, Military Review, Nov. 1979, ISS: The Military Balance 1979-1980, CSS; Security Arrangements inSinai…by Brig. Gen. (Res.) A Shalev, No. 3.0 CSS; The Military Balance and the Military Options after the Peace Treaty with Egypt, by Brig. Gen. (Res.) Y. Raviv, No.4, Dec. 1978, as well as many press reports including El Hawadeth, London, 3/7/80; El Watan El Arabi, Paris, 12/14/79. 13.
As for religious ferment in Egypt and the relations between Copts and
Moslems see the series of articles published in the Kuwaiti paper, El Qabas, 9/15/80. The English author Irene Beeson reports on the rift between Moslems and Copts, see: Irene Beeson, Guardian, London, 6/24/80, and Desmond Stewart, Middle EastInternmational, London 6/6/80. For other reports see Pamela Ann Smith, Guardian, London, 12/24/79; The Christian Science Monitor 12/27/79 as well as Al Dustour, London, 10/15/79; El Kefah El Arabi, 10/15/79. 14. Arab Press Service, Beirut, 8/6-13/80. The New Republic, 8/16/80, Der Spiegel as cited by Ha’aretz, 3/21/80, and 4/30-5/5/80; The Economist, 3/22/80; Robert Fisk, Times, London, 3/26/80; Ellsworth Jones, Sunday Times, 3/30/80. 15. J.P. Peroncell Hugoz, Le Monde, Paris 4/28/80; Dr. Abbas Kelidar, Middle East Review, Summer 1979;Conflict Studies, ISS, July 1975; Andreas Kolschitter, Der Zeit, (Ha’aretz, 9/21/79) Economist Foreign Report,10/10/79, Afro-Asian Affairs, London, July 1979. 16. Arnold Hottinger, “The Rich Arab States in Trouble,” The New York Review of Books, 5/15/80; Arab PressService, Beirut, 6/25-7/2/80; U.S. News and World Report, 11/5/79 as well as El Ahram, 11/9/79; El Nahar El Arabi Wal Duwali, Paris 9/7/79; El Hawadeth, 11/9/79; David Hakham, Monthly Review, IDF, Jan.-Feb. 79. 17. As for Jordan’s policies and problems see El Nahar El Arabi Wal Duwali, 4/30/79, 7/2/79; Prof. Elie Kedouri, Ma’ariv 6/8/79; Prof. Tanter, Davar 7/12/79; A. Safdi, Jerusalem Post, 5/31/79; El Watan El Arabi 11/28/79; El Qabas, 11/19/79. As for PLO positions see: The resolutions of the Fatah Fourth Congress, Damascus, August 1980.The Shefa’amr program of the Israeli Arabs was published in Ha’aretz, 9/24/80, and by Arab Press Report 6/18/80. For facts and figures on immigration of Arabs to Jordan, see Amos Ben Vered, Ha’aretz, 2/16/77; Yossef Zuriel, Ma’ariv 1/12/80. As to the PLO’s position towards Israel see Shlomo Gazit, Monthly Review; July 1980; Hani ElHasan in an interview, Al Rai Al’Am, Kuwait 4/15/80; Avi Plaskov, “The Palestinian Problem,” Survival, ISS, London Jan. Feb. 78; David Gutrnann, “The Palestinian Myth,” Commentary, Oct. 75; Bernard Lewis, “The Palestinians and the PLO,” Commentary Jan. 75; Monday Morning, Beirut, 8/18-21/80; Journal of PalestineStudies, Winter 1980.

18. Prof. Yuval Neeman, “Samaria–The Basis for Israel’s Security,” Ma’arakhot 272-273, May/June 1980; Ya’akov Hasdai, “Peace, the Way and the Right to Know,” Dvar Hashavua, 2/23/80. Aharon Yariv, “Strategic Depth–An Israeli Perspective,” Ma’arakhot 270-271, October 1979; Yitzhak Rabin, “Israel’s Defense Problems in the Eighties,” Ma’arakhot October 1979. 19. Ezra Zohar, In the Regime’s Pliers (Shikmona, 1974); Motti Heinrich, Do We have a Chance Israel, TruthVersus Legend (Reshafim, 1981). 20. Henry Kissinger, “The Lessons of the Past,” The Washington Review Vol 1, Jan. 1978; Arthur Ross, “OPEC’s Challenge to the West,” The Washington Quarterly, Winter, 1980; Walter Levy, “Oil and the Decline of the West,” Foreign Affairs, Summer 1980; Special Report–”Our Armed Forees-Ready or Not?” U.S. News and World Report 10/10/77; Stanley Hoffman, “Reflections on the Present Danger,” The New York Review of Books 3/6/80; Time 4/3/80; Leopold Lavedez “The illusions of SALT” Commentary Sept. 79; Norman Podhoretz, “The Present Danger,” Commentary March 1980; Robert Tucker, “Oil and American Power Six Years Later,” Commentary Sept. 1979; Norman Podhoretz, “The Abandonment of Israel,” Commentary July 1976; Elie Kedourie, “Misreading the Middle East,” Commentary July 1979. 21. According to figures published by Ya’akov Karoz, Yediot Ahronot,
10/17/80, the sum total of anti-Semitic incidents recorded in the world
in 1979 was double the amount recorded in 1978. In Germany, France, and
Britain the number of anti-Semitic incidents was many times greater in
that year. In the U.S. as well there has been a sharp increase in
anti-Semitic incidents which were reported in that article. For the new
anti-Semitism, see L. Talmon, “The New Anti-Semitism,” The New Republic, 9/18/1976; Barbara Tuchman, “They poisoned the Wells,” Newsweek 2/3/75.

Following is a report prepared by The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies’ "Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000." The main substantive ideas in this paper emerge from a discussion in which prominent opinion makers, including Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser participated. The report, entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," is the framework for a series of follow-up reports on strategy.

Israel has a large problem. Labor Zionism, which for 70 years has dominated the Zionist movement, has generated a stalled and shackled economy. Efforts to salvage Israel’s socialist institutions—which include pursuing supranational over national sovereignty and pursuing a peace process that embraces the slogan, "New Middle East"—undermine the legitimacy of the nation and lead Israel into strategic paralysis and the previous government’s "peace process." That peace process obscured the evidence of eroding national critical mass— including a palpable sense of national exhaustion—and forfeited strategic initiative. The loss of national critical mass was illustrated best by Israel’s efforts to draw in the United States to sell unpopular policies domestically, to agree to negotiate sovereignty over its capital, and to respond with resignation to a spate of terror so intense and tragic that it deterred Israelis from engaging in normal daily functions, such as commuting to work in buses.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s government comes in with a new set of ideas. While there are those who will counsel continuity, Israel has the opportunity to make a clean break; it can forge a peace process and strategy based on an entirely new intellectual foundation, one that restores strategic initiative and provides the nation the room to engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism, the starting point of which must be economic reform. To secure the nation’s streets and borders in the immediate future, Israel can:

Work closely with Turkey and Jordan to contain, destabilize, and roll-back some of its most dangerous threats. This implies clean break from the slogan, "comprehensive peace" to a traditional concept of strategy based on balance of power.

Change the nature of its relations with the Palestinians, including upholding the right of hot pursuit for self defense into all Palestinian areas and nurturing alternatives to Arafat’s exclusive grip on Palestinian society.

Forge a new basis for relations with the United States—stressing self-reliance, maturity, strategic cooperation on areas of mutual concern, and furthering values inherent to the West. This can only be done if Israel takes serious steps to terminate aid, which prevents economic reform.

This report is written with key passages of a possible speech marked TEXT, that highlight the clean break which the new government has an opportunity to make. The body of the report is the commentary explaining the purpose and laying out the strategic context of the passages.

A New Approach to Peace

Early adoption of a bold, new perspective on peace and security is imperative for the new prime minister. While the previous government, and many abroad, may emphasize "land for peace"— which placed Israel in the position of cultural, economic, political, diplomatic, and military retreat — the new government can promote Western values and traditions. Such an approach, which will be well received in the United States, includes "peace for peace," "peace through strength" and self reliance: the balance of power.

A new strategy to seize the initiative can be introduced:

TEXT:

We have for four years pursued peace based on a New Middle East. We in Israel cannot play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent. Peace depends on the character and behavior of our foes. We live in a dangerous neighborhood, with fragile states and bitter rivalries. Displaying moral ambivalence between the effort to build a Jewish state and the desire to annihilate it by trading "land for peace" will not secure "peace now." Our claim to the land —to which we have clung for hope for 2000 years--is legitimate and noble. It is not within our own power, no matter how much we concede, to make peace unilaterally. Only the unconditional acceptance by Arabs of our rights, especially in their territorial dimension, "peace for peace," is a solid basis for the future.

Israel’s quest for peace emerges from, and does not replace, the pursuit of its ideals. The Jewish people’s hunger for human rights — burned into their identity by a 2000-year old dream to live free in their own land — informs the concept of peace and reflects continuity of values with Western and Jewish tradition. Israel can now embrace negotiations, but as means, not ends, to pursue those ideals and demonstrate national steadfastness. It can challenge police states; enforce compliance of agreements; and insist on minimal standards of accountability.

Securing the Northern Border

Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon, including by:

striking Syria’s drug-money and counterfeiting infrastructure in Lebanon, all of which focuses on Razi Qanan.

paralleling Syria’s behavior by establishing the precedent that Syrian territory is not immune to attacks emanating from Lebanon by Israeli proxy forces.

striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper.

Israel also can take this opportunity to remind the world of the nature of the Syrian regime. Syria repeatedly breaks its word. It violated numerous agreements with the Turks, and has betrayed the United States by continuing to occupy Lebanon in violation of the Taef agreement in 1989. Instead, Syria staged a sham election, installed a quisling regime, and forced Lebanon to sign a "Brotherhood Agreement" in 1991, that terminated Lebanese sovereignty. And Syria has begun colonizing Lebanon with hundreds of thousands of Syrians, while killing tens of thousands of its own citizens at a time, as it did in only three days in 1983 in Hama.

Under Syrian tutelage, the Lebanese drug trade, for which local Syrian military officers receive protection payments, flourishes. Syria’s regime supports the terrorist groups operationally and financially in Lebanon and on its soil. Indeed, the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley in Lebanon has become for terror what the Silicon Valley has become for computers. The Bekaa Valley has become one of the main distribution sources, if not production points, of the "supernote" — counterfeit US currency so well done that it is impossible to detect.

Text:

Negotiations with repressive regimes like Syria’s require cautious realism. One cannot sensibly assume the other side’s good faith. It is dangerous for Israel to deal naively with a regime murderous of its own people, openly aggressive toward its neighbors, criminally involved with international drug traffickers and counterfeiters, and supportive of the most deadly terrorist organizations.

Given the nature of the regime in Damascus, it is both natural and moral that Israel abandon the slogan "comprehensive peace" and move to contain Syria, drawing attention to its weapons of mass destruction program, and rejecting "land for peace" deals on the Golan Heights.

Moving to a Traditional Balance of Power Strategy

TEXT:

We must distinguish soberly and clearly friend from foe. We must make sure that our friends across the Middle East never doubt the solidity or value of our friendship.

Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions. Jordan has challenged Syria's regional ambitions recently by suggesting the restoration of the Hashemites in Iraq. This has triggered a Jordanian-Syrian rivalry to which Asad has responded by stepping up efforts to destabilize the Hashemite Kingdom, including using infiltrations. Syria recently signaled that it and Iran might prefer a weak, but barely surviving Saddam, if only to undermine and humiliate Jordan in its efforts to remove Saddam.

But Syria enters this conflict with potential weaknesses: Damascus is too preoccupied with dealing with the threatened new regional equation to permit distractions of the Lebanese flank. And Damascus fears that the 'natural axis' with Israel on one side, central Iraq and Turkey on the other, and Jordan, in the center would squeeze and detach Syria from the Saudi Peninsula. For Syria, this could be the prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East which would threaten Syria's territorial integrity.

Since Iraq's future could affect the strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly, it would be understandable that Israel has an interest in supporting the Hashemites in their efforts to redefine Iraq, including such measures as: visiting Jordan as the first official state visit, even before a visit to the United States, of the new Netanyahu government; supporting King Hussein by providing him with some tangible security measures to protect his regime against Syrian subversion; encouraging — through influence in the U.S. business community — investment in Jordan to structurally shift Jordan’s economy away from dependence on Iraq; and diverting Syria’s attention by using Lebanese opposition elements to destabilize Syrian control of Lebanon.

Most important, it is understandable that Israel has an interest supporting diplomatically, militarily and operationally Turkey’s and Jordan’s actions against Syria, such as securing tribal alliances with Arab tribes that cross into Syrian territory and are hostile to the Syrian ruling elite.

King Hussein may have ideas for Israel in bringing its Lebanon problem under control. The predominantly Shia population of southern Lebanon has been tied for centuries to the Shia leadership in Najf, Iraq rather than Iran. Were the Hashemites to control Iraq, they could use their influence over Najf to help Israel wean the south Lebanese Shia away from Hizballah, Iran, and Syria. Shia retain strong ties to the Hashemites: the Shia venerate foremost the Prophet’s family, the direct descendants of which — and in whose veins the blood of the Prophet flows — is King Hussein.

Changing the Nature of Relations with the Palestinians

Israel has a chance to forge a new relationship between itself and the Palestinians. First and foremost, Israel’s efforts to secure its streets may require hot pursuit into Palestinian-controlled areas, a justifiable practice with which Americans can sympathize.

A key element of peace is compliance with agreements already signed. Therefore, Israel has the right to insist on compliance, including closing Orient House and disbanding Jibril Rujoub’s operatives in Jerusalem. Moreover, Israel and the United States can establish a Joint Compliance Monitoring Committee to study periodically whether the PLO meets minimum standards of compliance, authority and responsibility, human rights, and judicial and fiduciary accountability.

TEXT:

We believe that the Palestinian Authority must be held to the same minimal standards of accountability as other recipients of U.S. foreign aid. A firm peace cannot tolerate repression and injustice. A regime that cannot fulfill the most rudimentary obligations to its own people cannot be counted upon to fulfill its obligations to its neighbors.

Israel has no obligations under the Oslo agreements if the PLO does not fulfill its obligations. If the PLO cannot comply with these minimal standards, then it can be neither a hope for the future nor a proper interlocutor for present. To prepare for this, Israel may want to cultivate alternatives to Arafat’s base of power. Jordan has ideas on this.

To emphasize the point that Israel regards the actions of the PLO problematic, but not the Arab people, Israel might want to consider making a special effort to reward friends and advance human rights among Arabs. Many Arabs are willing to work with Israel; identifying and helping them are important. Israel may also find that many of her neighbors, such as Jordan, have problems with Arafat and may want to cooperate. Israel may also want to better integrate its own Arabs.

Forging A New U.S.-Israeli Relationship

In recent years, Israel invited active U.S. intervention in Israel’s domestic and foreign policy for two reasons: to overcome domestic opposition to "land for peace" concessions the Israeli public could not digest, and to lure Arabs — through money, forgiveness of past sins, and access to U.S. weapons — to negotiate. This strategy, which required funneling American money to repressive and aggressive regimes, was risky, expensive, and very costly for both the U.S. and Israel, and placed the United States in roles is should neither have nor want.

Israel can make a clean break from the past and establish a new vision for the U.S.-Israeli partnership based on self-reliance, maturity and mutuality — not one focused narrowly on territorial disputes. Israel’s new strategy — based on a shared philosophy of peace through strength — reflects continuity with Western values by stressing that Israel is self-reliant, does not need U.S. troops in any capacity to defend it, including on the Golan Heights, and can manage its own affairs. Such self-reliance will grant Israel greater freedom of action and remove a significant lever of pressure used against it in the past.

To reinforce this point, the Prime Minister can use his forthcoming visit to announce that Israel is now mature enough to cut itself free immediately from at least U.S. economic aid and loan guarantees at least, which prevent economic reform. [Military aid is separated for the moment until adequate arrangements can be made to ensure that Israel will not encounter supply problems in the means to defend itself]. As outlined in another Institute report, Israel can become self-reliant only by, in a bold stroke rather than in increments, liberalizing its economy, cutting taxes, relegislating a free-processing zone, and selling-off public lands and enterprises — moves which will electrify and find support from a broad bipartisan spectrum of key pro-Israeli Congressional leaders, including Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich.

Israel can under these conditions better cooperate with the U.S. to counter real threats to the region and the West’s security. Mr. Netanyahu can highlight his desire to cooperate more closely with the United States on anti-missile defense in order to remove the threat of blackmail which even a weak and distant army can pose to either state. Not only would such cooperation on missile defense counter a tangible physical threat to Israel’s survival, but it would broaden Israel’s base of support among many in the United States Congress who may know little about Israel, but care very much about missile defense. Such broad support could be helpful in the effort to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

To anticipate U.S. reactions and plan ways to manage and constrain those reactions, Prime Minister Netanyahu can formulate the policies and stress themes he favors in language familiar to the Americans by tapping into themes of American administrations during the Cold War which apply well to Israel. If Israel wants to test certain propositions that require a benign American reaction, then the best time to do so is before November, 1996.

Conclusions: Transcending the Arab-Israeli Conflict

TEXT: Israel will not only contain its foes; it will transcend them.

Notable Arab intellectuals have written extensively on their perception of Israel’s floundering and loss of national identity. This perception has invited attack, blocked Israel from achieving true peace, and offered hope for those who would destroy Israel. The previous strategy, therefore, was leading the Middle East toward another Arab-Israeli war. Israel’s new agenda can signal a clean break by abandoning a policy which assumed exhaustion and allowed strategic retreat by reestablishing the principle of preemption, rather than retaliation alone and by ceasing to absorb blows to the nation without response.

Israel’s new strategic agenda can shape the regional environment in ways that grant Israel the room to refocus its energies back to where they are most needed: to rejuvenate its national idea, which can only come through replacing Israel’s socialist foundations with a more sound footing; and to overcome its "exhaustion," which threatens the survival of the nation.

Ultimately, Israel can do more than simply manage the Arab-Israeli conflict though war. No amount of weapons or victories will grant Israel the peace its seeks. When Israel is on a sound economic footing, and is free, powerful, and healthy internally, it will no longer simply manage the Arab-Israeli conflict; it will transcend it. As a senior Iraqi opposition leader said recently: "Israel must rejuvenate and revitalize its moral and intellectual leadership. It is an important — if not the most important--element in the history of the Middle East." Israel — proud, wealthy, solid, and strong — would be the basis of a truly new and peaceful Middle East.

Participants in the Study Group on "A New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000:"

Richard Perle, American Enterprise Institute, Study Group Leader

James Colbert, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Johns Hopkins University/SAIS
Douglas Feith, Feith and Zell Associates
Robert Loewenberg, President, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies
Jonathan Torop, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
David Wurmser, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies
Meyrav Wurmser, Johns Hopkins University

Long before other journalists in the alternative media pointed out that a host of Israeli partisans, otherwise known as neoconservatives, were responsible for pushing the Bush administration toward war with Iraq in 2003, AFP’s Michael Collins Piper penned what still remains the ultimate book on this subject.
Published in 2004, Piper’s The High Priests of War* ventured into territory that the pro-Israel press refused to touch. While the American public got duped into believing smokescreen stories about Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Piper chronicled the exploits of such nefarious figures as Richard “Prince of Darkness” Perle. Also exposed were staunch Zionists such as Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and Scooter Libby, as well as The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol.
To get an idea of what actually transpired in the lead-up to war, Piper cited a little-known bit of advice offered by a supposedly “educational” group called the Israel Project. The group told its Zionist allies, “If your goal is regime change, you must be much more careful with your language because of the potential backlash. You do not want Americans to believe that the war on Iraq is being waged to protect Israel rather than to protect America.”
And that explains why Vice President Dick Cheney falsely warned his countrymen about Iraqi “mushroom clouds” while the neocons trotted out Secretary of State Colin Powell to push their phony WMD rhetoric. Powell later called it “the lowest point in my life.” Yet, behind the scenes, Piper described the realmovers and shakers: The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which called for a “New Pearl Harbor” 9-11 strike that would get the wheels of their war machine turning.
To his credit, Piper also clarified precisely who the neocons are.Despite being called “neoconservatives,” these “reformed Trotskyites” are actually big government Israel-firsters. From this writer’s perspective, the only real difference between themand the 1920s-style “progressives” is that these fake conservatives have a bloodthirsty penchant to start wars for Israel.
Unfortunately, as Maidhc Ó Cathail, an investigative journalist and Mideast analyst, wrote in a March 12 column, all of these war criminal neocons are still at large, escaping justice after deceiving Americans into accepting a lie that 19 cave-dwelling Muslims orchestrated the Sept. 11 terror strikes which then led to the catastrophic wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
These treasonousmen got away withmurder, and 10 years later the blood is still on their hands.
——
*The High Priests of War: The Secret History of How America’s “Neo-Conservative” Trotskyites Came to Power and Orchestrated the War Against Iraq as the First Step in Their Drive for Global Empire. Softcover, 128 pp., $20 plus $4 S&H inside the U.S. from AFP, 645 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, #100, Washington, D.C. 20003. Outside U.S. email shop@americanfreepress.net for S&H. Call AFP toll free at 1-888-699-6397 to charge. See also www.americanfreepress.net.

A Clean Break

A Clean Break'A Clean Break' (War for Israel) agenda of the Likudnik JINSA/CSP/PNAC Neocons (pages 261-269/318-321 of James Bamford's 'A Pretext for War' book):Get your own copy of A Pretext for War Now!*

A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the RealmThe following excerpts come from pages 261-269 of Bamford's 'A Pretext for War' book*:

"Then Bush addressed the sole items on the agenda for his first high level national security meeting. The topics were not terrorism--a subject he barely mentioned during the campaign --or nervousness over China or Russia, but Israel and Iraq. From the very first moment, the Bush foreign policy would focus on three key objectives: get rid of Saddam, end American involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and rearrange the dominoes in the Middle East. A key to the policy shift would be the concept of pre-emption.The blueprint for the new Bush policy had actually been drawn up five years earlier by three of his top national security advisors. Soon to be appointed to senior administration positions, they were Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser. Ironically the plan was orginally intended not for Bush but for another world leader, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.At the time, the three officials were out of government and working for conservative pro-Israel think tanks. Perle and Feith had previously served in high level Pentagon positions during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. In a very unusual move, the former--and future--senior American officials were acting as a sort of American privy council to the new Israeli Prime Minister. The Perle task force to advise Netanyahu was set up by the Jerusalem based Institute for Advanced Stategic and Political Studies, where Wurmser was working. A key part of the plan was to get the United States to pull out of peace negotiations and simply let Israel take care of the Palestinians as it saw fit. "Israel," said the report, "can manage it's own affairs. Such self-reliance will grant Israel greater freedom of action and remove a significant lever of pressure used against it in the past."But the centerpiece of the recommendations was the removal of Saddam Hussein as the first step in remaking the Middle East into a region friendly, instead of hostile, to Israel. Their plan "A Clean Break:A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," also signaled a radical departure from the peace-oriented policies of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated by a member of an extreme right-wing Israeli group.As part of their "grand strategy" they recommended that once Iraq was conquered and Saddam Hussein overthrown, he should be replaced by a puppet leader friendly to Israel. Whoever inherits Iraq, they wrote, dominates the entire Levant strategically. Then they suggested that Syria would be the next country to be invaded. Israel can shape it's strategic environment, they said.This would be done, they recommended to Netanyahu, by re-establishing the principle of pre-emption and by rolling back it's Arab neighbors. From then on, the principle would be to strike first and expand, a dangerous and provocative change in philosophy. They recommended launching a major unprovoked regional war in the Middle East, attacking Lebanon and Syria and ousting Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Then, to gain the support of the American government and public, a phony pretext would be used as the reason for the original invasion.The recommendation of Feith, Perle and Wurmser was for Israel to once again invade Lebanon with air strikes. But this time to counter potentially hostile reactions from the American government and public, they suggested using a pretext. They would claim that the purpose of the invasion was to halt Syria's drug-money and counterfeiting infrastructure located there. They were subjects in which Israel had virtually no interest, but they were ones, they said, with which America can sympathize.Another way to win American support for a pre-emptive war against Syria, they suggested, was by drawing attention to its weapons of mass destruction program. This claim would be that Israel's war was really all about protecting Americans from drugs, counterfeit bills, and WMD--nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.It was rather extraordinary for a trio of former, and potentially future, high-ranking American government officials to become advisors to a foreign government. More unsettling still was a fact that they were recommending acts of war in which Americans could be killed, and also ways to masquerade the true purpose of the attacks from the American public.Once inside Lebanon, Israel could let loose--to begin engaging Hizballah, Syria and Iran, as the principle agents of aggression in Lebanon. Then they would widen the war even further by using proxy forces--Lebanese militia fighters acting on Israel's behalf (as Ariel Sharon had done in the 80's)--to invade Syria from Lebanon. Thus, they noted, they could invade Syria by establishing the precedent that Syrian territory is not immune to attacks emanating from Lebanon by Israeli proxy forces.As soon as that fighting started, they advised, Israel could begin "striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper [emphasis in original]."The Perle task force even supplied Nentanyahu with some text for a television address, using the suggested pretext to justify the war. Years later, it would closely resemble speeches to justify their own Middle East wars; Iraq would simply replace Syria and the United States would replace Israel:

Negotiations with repressive regimes like Syria's require cautious realism. One cannot sensibly assume the other side's good faith. It is dangerous for Israel to deal naively with a regime murderous of its own people, openly aggressive towards its neighbors, criminally involved with international drug traffickers and counterfeiters, and supportive of the most deadly terrorist organizations.

The task force then suggested that Israel open a second front in its expanding war, with a focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq--an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right--as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions.

For years the killing of Saddam Hussein had been among the highest, and most secret, priorities of the Israeli government. In one stroke it would pay Saddam Hussein back for launching Scud missiles against Israel, killing several people, during the Gulf War. Redrawing the map of the Middle East would also help isolate Syria, Iraq's ally and Israel's archenemy along its northern border. Thus, in the early 1990's, after the US-led war in the Gulf, a small elite team of Israeli commandos was given the order to train in absolute secrecy for an assassination mission to bring down the Baghdad ruler.

The plan, code-named Bramble Bush, was to first kill a close friend of the Iraqi leader outside the country, someone from Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. Then, after learning the date and time of the funeral to be held in the town, a funeral Hussein was certain to attend, they would have time to covertly infiltrate a team of commandos into the country to carry out the assassination. The murder weapons were to be specially modified "smart" missiles that would be fired at Hussein as he stood in a crowd at the funeral.

But, the plan was finally abandoned after five members of the team were accidently killed during a dry run of the operation. Nevertheless, removing Saddam and converting Iraq from threat to ally had long been at the top of Israel's wish list.

Now Perle, Feith, and Wurmser were suggesting something far more daring--not just an assassination but a bloody war that would get rid of Saddam Hussein and also change the face of Syria and Lebanon. Perle felt their "Clean Break" recommendations were so important that he personally hand-carried the report to Netanyahu.

Wisely, Netanyahu rejected the task force' plan. But now, with the election of a receptive George W. Bush, they dusted off their pre-emptive war strategy and began getting ready to put it to use.

The new Bush policy was an aggressive agenda for any president, but especially for someone who had previously shown little interest in international affairs. We're going to correct the imbalances of the previous administration on the Mideast conflict, Bush told his freshly assembled senior national security team in the Situation Room on January 30, 2001. We're going to tilt it back toward Israel. . . .Anybody here ever met Ariel Sharon? Only Colin Powell raised his hand.

Bush was going to reverse the Clinton policy, which was heavily weighted toward bringing the bloody conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to a peaceful conclusion. There would be no more US interference; he would let Sharon resolve the dispute however he saw fit, with little or no regard for the situation of the Palestinians. The policy change was exactly as recommended by the Perle task force's "Clean Break" report.

I'm not going to go by past reputations when it comes to Sharon, Bush told his newly gathered national security team. I'm going to take him at face value. We'll work on a relationship based on how things go. Then he mentioned a trip he had taken with the Republican Jewish Coalition to Israel. We flew over the Palestinian camps. Looked real bad down there, he said with a frown. Then he said it was time to end America's efforts in the region. I don't see much we can do over there at this point, he said.

Colin Powell, Secretary of State for only a few days, was taken by surprise. The idea that such a complex problem, in which America had long been heavily involved, could be simply brushed away with the sweep of a hand made little sense. Fearing Israeli-led aggression, he quickly objected.

He stressed that a pullback by the United States would unleash Sharon and the Israeli army, recalled Paul O'Neill, who had be sworn in as Secretary of the Treasury by Bush only hours before and seated at the table. Powell told Bush, the consequences of that could be be dire, especially for the Palestinians. But Bush just shrugged. Sometimes a show of strength by one side can really clarify things, he said. Powell seemed startled, said O'Neill.

Over the following months, to the concern of Powell, the Bush-Sharon relationship became extremely tight. This is the best administration for Israel since Harry Truman, said Thomas Neuman, executive director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs "JINSA" a pro-Israel advocacy group. In an article in the Washington Post titled "Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical on Middle East Policy," Robert G. Kaiser noted the dramatic shift in policy.

For the First time, wrote Kaiser, a US administration and a Likud government in Israel are pursuing nearly identical policies. Earlier US administrations, from Jimmy Carter through Bill Clinton's, held Likud and Sharon at arm's length, distancing the United States from Likud's traditionally tough approach to the Palestinians. Using the Yiddish term for supporters of Sharon's political party to the new relationship between Bush and Sharon, a senior US government official told Kaiser, "The Likudniks are really in charge now."

With America's long struggle to bring peace to the region quickly terminated, George W. Bush could turn his attention to the prime focus of his first National Security Council meeting; ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein. Condoleezza Rice led off the discussion. But rather than mention anything about threats to the United States or weapons of mass destruction, she noted only that Iraq might be the key to reshaping the entire region. The words were practically lifted from the "Clean Break" report, which had the rather imperial-sounding subtitles: "A New Strategy for Securing the Realm."

Then Rice turned the meeting over to CIA Director George Tenet, who offered a grainy overhead picture of a factory that he said "might" be a plant "that produced either chemical or biological materials for weapons manufacture." There were no missiles or weapons of any kind, just some railroad tracks going to a building; truck activity; and a water tower--things that can be found in virtually any city in the US. Nor were there any human intelligence or signals intelligence reports. There was no confirming intelligence, Tenet said.

It was little more than a shell game. Other photo and charts showed US air activity over the "no fly-zone," but Tenet offered no more intelligence. Nevertheless, in a matter of minutes the talk switched from a discussion about very speculative intelligence to which targets to begin bombing in Iraq.

By the time the meeting was over, Treasury Secretary O'Neill was convinced that "getting Hussein was now the administration's focus, that much was already clear," But, O'Neill believed, the real destabilizing factor in the Middle East was not Saddam Hussein but the Israeli-Palestinian conflict--the issue Bush had just turned his back on. Ten years after the Gulf War, said O'Neill, "Hussein seemed caged and defanged. Clearly, there were many forces destabilizing the region, which we were now abandoning."

The war summit must also have seemed surreal to Colin Powell, who said little during the meeting and had long believed that Iraq had not posed a threat to the United States. As he would tell German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer just a few weeks later, "What we and other allies have been doing in the region, have succeeded in containing Saddam Hussein and his ambitions. . . .Containment has been a successful policy."

In addition to the "Clean Break" recommendations, David Wurmser only weeks before the NSC meeting had further elaborated on the way the United States might go about launching a pre-emptive war throughout the Middle East. America's and Israel's responses must be regional not local, he said. Israel and the United Staes should adopt a coordinated strategy, to regain the initiative and reverse their region-wide strategic retreat. They should broaden the conflict to strike fatally, not merely disarm, the center of radicalism in the region--the regimes of Damascus, Baghdad, Tehran, Tripoli, and Gaza. That would re-establish the recognition that fighting with either the US or Israel is suicidal. Many in the Middle East will then understand the merits of being an American ally and of making peace with Israel.

In the weeks and months following the NSC meeting, Perle, Feith and Wurmser began taking their places in the Bush administration. Perle became chairman of the reinvigorated and powerful Defence Policy Board, packing it with like-minded neoconservative super-hawks anxious for battle. Feith was appointed to the highest policy position in the Pentagon, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. And Wurmser moved into a top policy position in the State Department before later becoming Cheney's top Middle East expert.

With the Pentagon now under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz--both of whom had also long believed that Saddam Hussein should have been toppled during the first Gulf War--the war planners were given free reign. What was needed, however, was a pretext--perhaps a major crisis. Crisis can be opportunities, wrote Wurmser im his paper calling for an American-Israeli pre-emptive war throughout the Middle East.

Seeing little reason, or intelligence justification, for war at the close of the inaugural National Security Council meeting, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was perplexed. Who, exactly, was pushing this foreign policy? He wondered to himself. And "why Saddam, why now, and why [was] this central to US interests?"

The following excerpts come from pages 318-322 of Bamford's 'A Pretext for War' book*:

"Hadley and Libby were part of another secret office that had been set up within the White House. Known as the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), it was established in August 2002 by Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card, Jr., at the same time the OSP (Office of Special Plans) was established in Feith's office. Made up of high-level administration officials, its job was to sell the war to the general public, largely through televised addresses and by selectively leaking the intelligence to the media.

In June 2002, a leaked computer disk containing a presentation by chief Bush strategist Karl Rove revealed a White House political plan to use the war as a way to "maintain a positive issue environment." But the real pro-war media blitz was scheduled for the fall and the start of the election season "because from a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August," said Card.

At least once a week they would gather around the blonde conference table downstairs in the Situation Room, the same place the war was born on January 30, 2001, ten days into the Bush presidency. Although real intelligence had improved very little in the intervening nineteen months, the manufacturing of it had increased tremendously. In addition to Hadley and Libby, those frequently attending the WHIG meetings included Karl Rove, Condoleezza Rice, communications gurus Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James R. Wilkinson; and legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio.

In addition to ties between Hussein and 9/11, among the most important products the group was looking to sell as Labor Day 2002 approached were frightening images of mushroom clouds, mobile biological weapons labs, and A-bomb plants, all in the hands of a certified "madman." A key piece of evidence that Hussein was building a nuclear weapon turned out to be the discredited Italian documents purchased on a street corner from a con man.

The WHIG began priming its audience in August when Vice President Cheney, on three occasions, sounded a shrill alarm over Saddam Hussein's nuclear threat. There "is no doubt," he declared, that Saddam Hussein "has weapons of mass destruction." Again and again, he hit the same chord. "What we know now, from various sources, is that he . . . continues to pursue a nuclear weapon." And again: "We do know, with absolute certainty, that he is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon."

Facing network television cameras, Cheney warned, "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. . . . Among other sources, we've gotten this from firsthand testimony from defectors, including Saddam's own son-in-law." The relative was Hussein Kamel, who defected to Jordan in 1995 with a great deal of inside information on Iraq's special weapons programs, which he managed. He was later convinced by Saddam to return to Iraq, but executed by the ruler soon after his arrival.

But what Kamel told his interrogators was the exact opposite of what Cheney was claiming he said. After numerous debriefings by officials from the United States, the UN, and Jordan, he said on August 22, 1995, that Saddam had ended all uranium-enrichment programs at the beginning of the Gulf War in 1991 and never restarted them. He also made clear that "all weapons --biological, chemical, missile, nuclear--were destroyed." Investigators were convinced that Kamel was telling the truth, since he supplied them with a great deal of stolen raw data and was later murdered by his father-in-law as a result. But that was not the story Feith's OSP, Bush's WHIG, or Cheney wanted the American public to hear.

At the same time that Cheney began his media blitz, Ariel Sharon's office in Israel, as if perfectly coordinated, began issuing similar dire warnings concerning Hussein and pressing the Bush administration to go to war with Iraq. Like those from Cheney, pronouncements from Sharon's top aide, Ranaan Gissin, included frightening "evidence" --- equally phony --- of nuclear, as well as biological and chemical, threats.

"As evidence of Iraq's weapons building activities, " said an Associated Press report on the briefing, "Israel points to an order Saddam gave to Iraq's Atomic Energy Commission last week to speed up its work, said Sharon aide Ranaan Gissin. 'Saddam's going to be able to reach a point where these weapons will be operational,' he said. . . . Israeli intelligence officials have gathered evidence that Iraq is speeding up efforts to produce biological and chemical weapons, Gissin said."

It was clear, based on the postwar reviews done in Israel, that Israeli intelligence had no such evidence. Instead, the "evidence" was likely cooked up in Sharon's own Office of Special Plans unit, which was coordinating its activities with the Feith/Wurmser/Shulsky Office of Special Plans. The joint get-Saddam media blitz would also explain the many highly secret visits by the Israeli generals to Feith's office during the summer..

"Israel is urging U.S. officials not to delay a military strike against Iraq's Saddam Hussein, an aide to Prime Minister Ariel Minister said Friday," the AP report continued. " "Any postponement of an attack on Iraq at this stage with serve no purpose,' Gissin told the Associated Press. 'It will only give him [Saddam] more of an opportunity to accelerate his program of weapons of mass destruction.'"

As expected. Sharon's callw as widely publicized and increased pressure on Congress, which often bows to Israel's wishes, to vote in favor of the Bush war resolution. "Israel To U.S.: Don't Delay Iraq Attack," said a CBS News headline. "Israel is urging U.S. officials not to delay a military strike against Iraq's Saddam Hussein, an aide to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Friday," said the report.

The story also made the news in London, where the Guardian newspaper ran the headline: "Israel Puts Pressure on US to Strike Iraq." It went on, "With foreign policy experts in Washington becoming increasingly critical of the wisdom of a military strike, and European governments showing no willingness to support an attack, the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, wants to make it clear that he is the US president's most reliable ally."

It was as if the Feith-Wurmser-Perle "Clean Break" plan come full circle. Their plan for Israel to overthrow Saddam Hussein and put a pro-Israel regime in his place had been rejected by former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Now Bush, with Sharon's support, was about to put it into effect.

Across the Atlantic, British Prime Minister Tony Blair also contributed to the war fever by releasing a much-hyped report that reinforced the White House theme that Iraq was an imminent threat not only to the United States but also to Britain. In addition to including a reference to the bogus Iraq-Niger uranium deal, the report -- later dubbed the "doggie dossier"--made another frightening claim. It warned that Iraq could launch a deadly biological or chemical attack with long-range ballistic missiles on British tourists and servicemen in Cyprus with just forty-five minute's notice.

Only after the war would it be publicly revealed that the reference was not to a strategic weapon that could reach Cyprus, but simply to a short-range battlefield weapon that could not come anywhere close to Cyprus. And because all the missiles were disassembled, even to fire on them on the battlefield would take not forty-five minutes but days of assembly and preparation. At least three times prior to the war, Blair was warned by intelligence officials that the report was inaccurate, but he made no public mention of it.. "

Sibel Edmonds has recently updated her website with a gallery of 21 photographs
in 3 groups, ostensibly of parties guilty in her case. Three of the
photographs are simply question marks, for reasons as yet unknown.
As Edmonds has said, her case involves "highly-recognizable, highly-known names", as can be confirmed below.

So what are these men guilty of? In response to this summary of the allegations, Edmonds as said: "as far as published articles go, this one nails it 100%":

Sibel Edmonds, the Turkish FBI translator turned whistleblower who has
been subjected to a gag order could provide a major insight into how
neoconservatives distort US foreign policy and enrich themselves at the same time.
On one level, her story appears straightforward: several Turkish
lobbying groups allegedly bribed congressmen to support policies
favourable to Ankara. But beyond that, the Edmonds revelations become
more serpentine and appear to involve AIPAC, Israel and a number of leading neoconservatives
who have profited from the Turkish connection. Israel has long
cultivated a close relationship with Turkey since Ankara's neighbours
and historic enemies - Iran, Syria and Iraq - are also hostile to Tel
Aviv. Islamic Turkey has also had considerable symbolic value for
Israel, demonstrating that hostility to Muslim neighbours is not a sine
qua non for the Jewish state.

Turkey benefits from the relationship by securing general benevolence
and increased aid from the US Congress - as well as access to otherwise
unattainable military technology. The Turkish General Staff has a
particular interest because much of the military spending is channeled
through companies in which the generals have a financial stake, making
for a very cozy and comfortable business arrangement. The commercial
interest has also fostered close political ties, with the American
Turkish Council, American Turkish Cultural Alliance and the Assembly of
Turkish American Associations all developing warm relationships with
AIPAC and other Jewish and Israel advocacy groups throughout the US.

Someone has to be in the middle to keep the happy affair going, so enter
the neocons, intent on securing Israel against all comers and also keen
to turn a dollar. In fact the neocons seem to have a deep and abiding
interest in Turkey, which, under other circumstances, might be difficult
to explain. Doug Feith's International Advisors Inc, a registered agent for Turkey in 1989 - 1994, netted $600,000 per year from Turkey, with Richard Perle
taking $48,000 annually as a consultant. Other noted neoconservatives
linked to Turkey are former State Department number three, Marc Grossman, current Pentagon Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman, Paul Wolfowitz and former congressman Stephen Solarz.
The money involved does not appear to come from the Turkish government,
and FBI investigators are trying to determine its source and how it is
distributed. Some of it may come from criminal activity, possibly drug trafficking, but much more might come from arms dealing.
Contracts in the hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars
provide considerable fat for those well placed to benefit. Investigators
are also looking at Israel's particular expertise in the illegal sale
of US military technology to countries like China and India. Fraudulent
end-user certificates produced by Defense Ministries in Israel and
Turkey are all that is needed to divert military technology to other,
less benign, consumers. The military-industrial-complex/neocon network
is also well attested. Doug Feith has been associated with Northrup
Grumman for years, while defense contractors fund many neocon-linked
think tanks and "information" services. Feith, Perle and a number of
other neocons have long had beneficial relationships with various Israeli defense contractors. (Philip Giraldi from Cannistraro Associates, April 24 edition of The American Conservative)

While Edmonds claims the Timespublished only 20% of her allegations, antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo has published a good analysis
that gets to the heart of some of the deeper implications of her case,
including Israeli involvement in 9/11, and the
American-Israeli-Turkish-Pakistani-"Al-Qaeda" (i.e., CIA/Mossad/ISI)
terror connections.

(...) The real driving force behind the U.S. government's insane hunger for war is Israel: the zionist regime itself, zionist agents inside the U.S. political system who represent Israel's interests and work to further them via lobbying, funding and other means, [8] and those who work to realise the objectives of Israel from within the highest levels of the U.S. government and beyond, even to the extreme detriment of the U.S. itself, as American leaders and policy-makers, and as representatives of the American people. The so-called neo-conservatives are the most powerful and obvious example of the latter, and their rise to power was, in many ways, the final phase of the Israeli coup d'etat. [18][19]

The Ziocons

The American neocons (most of them Jewish, many of them Israeli 'dual nationals', and all of them ardent zionists) [20][21] are openly loyal to Israel and their hawkish foreign policy reflects it. U.S. foreign policy under the neocons is barely distinguishable from Israeli foreign policy, because that's basically what it is [22][23]. Israel has long sought to weaken and destabilise its Arab neighbors as a means to improve and ensure its own security [24] while simultaneously disrupting support given to the indigenous Palestinians by Arab groups and nations sympathetic to their cause. In The Israeli Origins of Bush II's War Stephen J. Sniegoski writes:

Because Israel's neighbors opposed the Zionist project of creating an exclusivist Jewish state, the idea of weakening and dissolving those neighbors was not an idea just of the Israeli Right but a central Zionist goal from a much earlier period, promoted by David Ben-Gurion himself. As Saleh Abdel-Jawwad, a professor at Birzeit University in Ramallah, Palestine, writes:

"Israel has supported secessionist movements in Sudan, Iraq, Egypt, and Lebanon and any secessionist movements in the Arab world which Israel considers an enemy. Yet the concern for Iraq and [Israel's] attempts to weaken or prevent it from developing its strengths has always been a central Zionist objective. At times, Israel succeeded in gaining a foothold in Iraq by forging secret yet strong relationships with leaders from the Kurdish movement."[25]

It's by no coincidence that we're seeing the U.S. use the same modusoperandi right now in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran. Thanks to a well-established network of powerful Jewish Bush administration executives and the Israel lobby at large, the Zionist agenda has become America's agenda, and the new preemptive war-for-Israel doctrine of post-9/11 USA has become official American policy.

The ziocons made their policy views clear well before 9/11 in the document called A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm[26], prepared back in 1996 for Israel's psycho right wing Likud party, led by then prime minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu. It was authored by a group of rabidly zionist neoconservative Jews including Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, on behalf of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), and proposed a hawkish plan based on military preemption, a more aggressive approach to the Palestinian 'problem', the removal of Saddam Hussein from power, and the eventual elimination of the governments of Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iran - the kind of ideas that only sit well in the minds of madmen and belligerent Jewish supremacists. A Clean Break stated, in part:

Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions.

There was nothing new in the Clean Break paper, it was just good old fashioned zionism: territorial expansion by force in the name of a 'Greater Israel'. Its authors, Richard Perle (Israeli dual national), Douglas Feith (also an Israeli dual national) and David Wurmser (another zionist Jew) would all go on to hold powerful positions in the Bush administration where they've worked tirelessly to realise the vision they outlined for Netanyahu in the Clean Break document [27] - Feith as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Wurmser as Middle East Adviser to Dick Cheney, and Perle as Chairman of the Defense Policy Board.

Richard "The Prince of Darkness" Perle is a particularly nasty zionist. Aside from his treasonous role in the U.S. government, he's a member of such pro-Israel think tanks as the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) , the Center for Security Policy (CSP), the Hudson Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP, which is basically an offshoot organisation of AIPAC), and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) [28]. He's also a director of the Jerusalem Post, a personal friend of former Israeli prime minister and arch-zionist Ariel "The Butcher" Sharon, an ex-employee of Soltam, an Israeli weapons manufacturer [29], and a spy for Israel [30][30b].

When prominent ziocons William Kristol and Robert Kagan founded the Project For A New American Century (PNAC) [31] in 1997, Perle and Feith were keen to come to the party along with a whole host of other ardent zionist neocons such as Elliott Abrams, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Rabbi Dov Zakheim, Elliot Cohen, Norman Podhoretz et al [32], and the following year in 1998, the PNAC group sent Bill Clinton a letter [33] urging him to attack Iraq and oust Saddam from power, in keeping with the policy advice given to Israel by the same group years earlier in the Clean Break document. From the letter:

"Such uncertainty [about Iraqi WMDs] will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat."[34]

By "world", of course, they meant "Israel", since Saddam was never a threat to America, and PNAC knew it. In December of 1998, Clinton went ahead with PNAC's advice and heavily bombed Iraq, citing the security of its neighbours as part of his reason for doing so:

"Earlier today, I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.

Their purpose is to protect the national interest of the United States, and indeed the interests of people throughout the Middle East and around the world.

Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons."[35]

Clinton's attack on Iraq left Saddam in power though, which wasn't good enough for the PNAC ziocons. That was made Kristol clear with the September 2000 publication (just before Bush's non-election) of their infamous 90 page long 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' (RAD) policy document [36.pdf], in which they advocated more of the same aggressive, warmongering strategy proposed earlier in the Clean Break paper. RAD was just a massively beefed up version of Israel's Clean Break dressed up to look as though it had American interests at heart. Peter Shaenk put it this way in an article called Once a Company Man, Always a Company Man:

When PNAC was founded, a group of neo-cons wrote a spin-off paper elaborating on "Clean Break". It was entitled "Rebuilding America’s Defenses" or RAD. The title implies that agents of Israel, (Perle and co.) got together and wrote a policy paper that was concerned only with America’s future security and establishment as the preeminent world power. A PAX Americana if you will. They even got Dick Cheney to participate to give it a more "American" look and less of an "Israeli" front group image.[37]

When Bush was not-elected in January 2001 [38], the ziocons' time had come. No less than twelve of PNAC's members scored prominent positions in his administration - Dick Cheney, Vice President; Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense; Rabbi Dov Zakheim, Undersecretary of Defense and Comptroller of the Pentagon [39]; Richard Armitage, Deputy Sec. of State; Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Chief of Staff to Cheney; Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense; Richard Perle, Member, Defense Policy Advisory Board; John Bolton, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, Elliot Abrams, Special Asst. to the President; Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; Zalmay Kahlilzad, Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Iraq; and James Woolsey, Member, Pentagon Defense Policy Board [40]. It was nothing short of an Israeli political takeover of the U.S. government. The pieces had been put in place to implement the ziocon vision outlined in A Clean Break and RAD, and now all that was needed was the false flag attacks of 9/11 [41][42][43] to kickstart and justify the neocon wet dream of endless Israeli proxy wars in the Middle East in the name of the oxymoronic "war on terror". (...)

Nearly 34 years ago, an America-firster used The American Mercury magazine to warn of the danger posed by Zionism and its rule of Washington and the Mideast. John Henshaw wrote this article shortly after Israel laid claim to the annexed land during 1967 Arab-Israeli war. This article first appeared in the spring of 1968.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The metamorphosis of tiny Israel from a midget to a giant is in the making. The grand design of Judaic-Zionist expansionist doctrine is to seize all the oil-rich lands from the shores of the Euphrates to the banks of the Nile.

In defining the aims of Zionism, Hebrew scholar Levnoch Osman recently said: "In our eternal Book of Books (the Torah), the lofty ethical teachings of which are cherished by all mankind, the land of Israel is described not as a long, narrow strip of land with wavy, crooked borders, but as a state with broad natural borders. God has promised to Patriarch Abraham the following:

"I give unto them the land where they have sown their seed, from the river of Egypt unto the great river of Euphrates’ (Genesis 15:18). And so, in order to realize the words of this prophecy, the Israeli state had to continue, not in the borders it has today but within its broad historical boundaries."

And as far back as 1952 Moshe Dayan, the present Israeli defense minister, declared:

"Our task consists of preparing the Israeli army for the new war approaching in order to achieve our ultimate goal, the creation of an Israeli empire."

The British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, who served as an adviser on Near Eastern affairs to the British delegation at the Versailles Conference, in a newspaper article published in June last year stated the Zionist aims in these words:

We are Jews, the living representatives of Judah, one of the 12 tribes of Israel that conquered most of Palestine in the 13th century B.C. We held Judah’s share of the conquered territory for seven centuries, till we were deported by Nebuchadnezzer in 587 B.C. We were back again within less than half a century, and we then held Judea, once more, for the next 773 years, till we were evicted by the Romans in A.D. 135. We have never renounced our claim to the land of Israel. We have always hoped, believed, and proclaimed that we shall get this land back again. It is our land, we contend.

After another 1,883 years we did recover a foothold there in 1918, and during the half-century since then, by devoted hard work, ability and military valor, we have built up our present national State of Israel, and have inflicted three smashing defeats on the Arabs, who have been trying to evict us again.

We want to have a country of our own again, like other peoples and like our own ancestors. We also need to have a country of our own, because, since the conversion of the Roman empire to Christianity in the fourth century A.D., we have been penalized and persecuted by the Western Christian majority among whom we have had to live.

The persecution has culminated in the unprecedented crime of genocide, which has been committed against us in our lifetime by a Western people, the Germans, in Europe. We are not going to let the Arabs commit the same crime of genocide against us here, in our own land of Israel.

Genocide in Six-day War

Apologist Toynbee omitted mentioning the fact that the Jews themselves are currently engaged in genocide. During the Sis-Day War last summer, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan ordered Brig. Gen. Yesha’ahu Gavish, the Israeli commander of the Sinai campaign, to ruthlessly drive the hapless Egyptian troops into the Sinai Desert to die of thirst, hunger and heat. Temperature on the arid Sinai rise to more than 100 degrees during the day. For over two weeks thousand of wretched Egyptian stragglers wandered over the swirling wastes finally drop dead in their tracks.

U.S. reconnaissance planes flying on the perimeter of the Sinai Desert took hundreds of pictures of the stragglers and reported there were 50,000 Egyptians dead or dying on the desert at the time. The U.S. Air Force loaded 60,000 gallons of water in five-gallon jerry-cans on pallets and prepared to drop them in the area where stragglers were observed. However, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara ordered the projected mission of mercy halted after he received phone calls from White House foreign policy-planner Walt Rostow and UN Ambassador Arthur Goldberg.

This flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war amounted to genocide, designed to destroy a whole nation.

Newspaper reporters visiting the war zones in Syria and Jordan, reported that if one sniper in a village fired on Israeli troops, the whole village was destroyed including the women and children. Napalm is frequently used.

This systematic extermination is an ideological doctrine of Zionism. The leading exponent of genocide is the chauvinist Moshe Dayan, whom the Zionists have proclaimed a Biblical "messiah" on a white horse. Arrogant, boastful Gen. Yitzhak Rabin, chief of the Israeli General Staff, who plotted and executed the Six-Day blitzkrieg last June, is in direct charge of the projected expansionist program from the Euphrates to the Nile.

The scope of this ambitious scheme of territorial seizures and exploitation has been recognized by at least a few of our American military strategists for years. This writer recalls that a dozen years ago an Army lieutenant colonel, who was a student at the War College, confined that some of his instructors believed the Zionist expansionist policy would provide the spark to ignite World War III.

(Incidentally, the then lieutenant colonel is now one of the top commanding generals in Vietnam.)

By guile, treachery and bloodletting, the Zionists plot to annex all of Jordan, virtually all of Syria, half of Iraq and a large part of Saudi Arabia and all of the rich cotton lands of the Nile Valley. It would be a simpler matter then to grab Yemen, Aden, Muscat, Qatar and Oman with their rich oil development. Israel is already well advanced in the development of its first nuclear warhead.

According to the Zionists’ schedule of operations, within a decade the Israeli empire be the master of the Middle East and take its place as a nuclear superpower on equal footing with the Soviet Union and the United States. David Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company will pay its royalties to the Israeli military usurpers instead of the Arab sheiks.

Fabulous Oil Reserves

The stakes are high in this traditionally British-protected region. The Persian Gulf and adjacent countries hold 70 percent of the non-communist world’s oil reserves and produce half of its oil output. British with-drawl from Aden creates a power vacuum that will inevitably be filled by Israel and the Soviet Union.

The British have expressed the pious hope that their withdrawal would galvanize the Arab rulers into dropping their feuds and really unite in a mutual defense pact. However, the spreading oil boom is intensifying the territorial ambitions of rival kingdoms, sultanates and sheikdoms. Iran is selling oil to Israel, another aggravating factor in Mideast tensions.

Like the tentacles of an octopus the Israeli armed forces struck out in all directions into Jordan, Syria and Egypt in Israel’s Six-Day aggression. Last June. Even when encountering no resistance, the Israeli armored forces abruptly halted at predetermined strategic terrain points; they had accomplished their mission in the first phase of the Zionist Grand Design of imperialistic conquest. It was time to stop and consolidate their gains rather than risk spreading their forces too thin.

Israeli leader Menachem Begin says:

"The return of even one bit of earth to the Arab would be a betrayal of the nation."

The grandiose idea of an Israeli empire controlling the Middle East is now for the first time arousing great popular enthusiasm among Jews everywhere in the world.

Officially Israel is continuing the pretense of keeping the door open to negotiations that might result in return of the conquered territory, in exchange for Arab recognition of Israel and peace treaty.

Jordan’s King Hussein has reportedly already made a secret and desperate offer to Israel: In exchange for the return of the West Bank of the Jordan River, Hussein agreed to demilitarize it, negotiate border adjustments and even waive his insistence upon regaining the Old City of Jerusalem. Israel rejected the offer. Israeli Minister of Labor Yigal Allon bluntly stated:

"The natural border of the country is the Jordan River – a border that would be established only if Israel kept the West Bank areas it took from Jordan."

Gen. Aluf Ezer Weizmann, second highest-ranking officer in the Israeli army, is even more adamant: "We shall stay where we are and bring in Jews. We now have the unusual opportunity to consolidate the state for the Jewish people and help prevent future wars."

"If there is a fourth war," Defense Minister Moshe Dayan gloats, "we are in a position to win more decisively than ever."

And he warned that in the "fourth war" the great cities of Cairo, Damascus and Amman will be annihilated. This is in conformity with the genocidal plan.

Zionist have their eyes set on all of the land between the Nile and the Euphrates. The plan for a "Greater Israel" is as old as Zionism itself.

Israelis bitterly complain that along with the occupied territory that is three times the size of Israel, they have inherited its population of 1,330,000 Arabs. (...)

Netanyahu: No ‘Lebanon’ will be on the map
At a news conference in Switzerland, on the occasion of the building an Israeli railway there, the German newspaper Die Zeit interviewed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

“Congratulations Mr. Netanyahu, my first question is that does the beginning of the large train line’s construction confirm the announcement of the dissident Syrian Intelligence Office that you will strike Lebanon?”

In reply, Netanyahu stated:

“Yes, and it is not a secret that it will happen with U.S.-Gulf support and that is why they have been warned, but before you ask, you have a look at the new map of the world and see that there is no nation with this name.”

Given that the UN Security Council has listed 388 Israeli airspace violations by Israel against Lebanon, there is no doubt what Israel is planning regarding Lebanon.

According to its June 3, 1997 Statement of Principles, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was created to advance a “Reaganite foreign policy of military strength and moral clarity,” a policy PNAC co-founders, William Kristol and Robert Kagan, had advocated the previous year in Foreign Affairs to counter what they construed as the American public’s short-sighted indifference to foreign “commitments.” Calling for a significant increase in “defense spending,” PNAC exhorted the United States “to meet threats before they become dire.”

The Wolfowitz Doctrine

The idea of preemptive war also known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine—subsequently dubbed the “Bush Doctrine” by PNAC signatory Charles Krauthammer—can be traced as far back as Paul Wolfowitz’s Ph.D. dissertation, “Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East,” which was based on “a raft of top-secret documents” his influential mentor, Cold War nuclear strategist Albert Wohlstetter, somehow “got his hands on” during a post-Six Day War trip to Israel. The “top-secret” Israeli documents supposedly showed that Egypt was planning to divert a Johnson administration proposal for regional civilian nuclear energy into a weapons program. Among those who signed PNAC’s Statement of Principles were Wohlstetter protégés Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Wolfowitz, who despite having been investigated for passing a classified document to an Israeli government official through an AIPAC intermediary in 1978 would be appointed Deputy Secretary of Defense in the George W. Bush administration, where he would be the first to suggest attacking Iraq four days after 9/11; Wolfowitz protégé I. Lewis Libby, who later “hand-picked” Vice President Dick Cheney’s staff mainly from pro-Israel think tanks; Elliott Abrams, who would go on to serve as Bush’s senior director on the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs, his mother-in-law, Midge Decter, and her husband, Norman Podhoretz; and Eliot A. Cohen, who would later smear Walt and Mearsheimer’s research on the Israel lobby’s role in skewing U.S. foreign policy as “anti-Semitic.”

On January 26, 1998, PNAC wrote the first of its many open letters to U.S. presidents and Congressional leaders, in which they enjoined President Clinton that “removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power […] now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.” Failure to eliminate “the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use” its non-existent weapons of mass destruction, the letter cautioned, would put at risk “the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil.” An additional signatory this time was another Wohlstetter protégé, Richard Perle, a widely suspected Israeli agent of influence whose hawkish foreign policy views were shaped when Hollywood High School classmate and girlfriend, Joan Wohlstetter, invited him for a swim in her family’s swimming pool and her father handed Perle his 1958 RAND paper, “The Delicate Balance of Terror,” thought to be an inspiration for Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.

Having helped sow the seeds of the Iraq War five years before Operation Iraqi Freedom, PNAC wrote a second letter to Clinton later that year. Joining with the International Crisis Group, and the short-lived Balkan Action Council and Coalition for International Justice, they took out an advertisement in the New York Times headlined “Mr. President, Milosevic is the Problem.” Expressing “deep concern for the plight of the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo,” the letter declared that “[t]here can be no peace and stability in the Balkans so long as Slobodan Milosevic remains in power.” It urged the United States to lead an international effort which should demand a unilateral ceasefire by Serbian forces, put massive pressure on Milosevic to agree on “a new political status for Kosovo,” increase funding for Serbia’s “democratic opposition,” tighten economic sanctions in order to hasten regime change, cease diplomatic efforts to reach a compromise, and support the Hague tribunal’s investigation of Milosevic as a war criminal. Now that “the world’s newest state” (prior to Israel’s successful division of Sudan) is run by a “mafia-like” organization involved in trafficking weapons, drugs and human organs, there appears to be much less concern for the plight of the ethnic Serbian population of Kosovo.

Thanks to the efforts of the indefatigable James Morris, a seeming
transformation of the view of the illustrious Noam Chomsky was revealed,
which, if not equivalent to the change that Saul of Tarsus underwent
while on the road to Damascus, was significant nonetheless. Morris
seems to have a knack for ferreting out the unknown views of the famous,
as was illustrated in his 2010 email exchange with General David
Petraeus, then head of U.S. Central Command, in which he was able to
reveal the latter’s close relationship with neocon Max Boot and his
ardent desire to propitiate the pro-Zionist Jewish community at a time
when it was generally thought that Petraeus was critical of the
negative effects of the intimate U.S.-Israeli relationship on America’s
position in the Middle East.

The Chomsky revelation took place while the latter was a guest on
Phil Tourney’s “Your Voice Counts” program on Republic Broadcasting
Network from 2:00 pm to 3:00pm Eastern Standard Time on Sunday, February
24, 2013. While Chomsky is a strong and very knowledgeable critic of
Israel, he also has been (at least, was before this program) a stringent
critic of the idea that the neocons have any significant impact on
American Middle East policy. Rather, he presents a somewhat nebulous,
quasi-monolithic, corporate elite, which includes the oil interests, as
determining American policy in that region—as it does everywhere else in
the globe—for its own economic interests. In what has been Chomsky’s
view, Israel only serves as an instrument for American imperialism; that
it too might benefit from American policies is, presumably, only an
incidental by-product.

Chomsky was quite impressive on the program as he demonstrated
extensive knowledge of the USS Liberty issue, which is a major issue of
the program, since Tourney was a seaman on that ill-fated ship that was
deliberately attacked by Israeli planes and gunboats during the Six Day
War in June 1967, causing the deaths of 34 U.S. seamen and wounding 171
others out of a crew of 297.

Chomsky included an injection of his standard theme that Israel
became a valuable strategic asset to the United States with the 1967 war
when it wrecked Nasser and secular Arab nationalism in general, thus
aiding America’s conservative client states, such as Saudi Arabia.

Listener phone calls were restricted to the last 15 minutes.
Consequently, James Morris wasn’t able to get on the program until the
last five minutes when he tried to get Chomsky to address the issue of
the connection between the neocons and Israel. Morris cited
then-Secretary of State Powell’s reference to the “JINSA crowd”
(Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) as the primary force
for the war on Iraq within the Bush Administration. Morris went on to
say that the neocons were a leading element of the Israel lobby.

After Morris made these statements, Chomsky amazingly blurted out
that he “agreed completely” with him regarding the importance of the
neocons—describing the neocons as “tremendously important.” Chomsky
acknowledged that the neoconservatives had been the “dominant force” in
the Bush administration, and that they had “pushed through” the Iraq
war over many objections even from within the government. What Chomsky
had said about the importance of the neocons was radically different
from his usual portrayal of a monolithic corporatist dominance of U.S.
Middle East policy. Chomsky even seemed to agree that the neocons held
positions that diverged from those of the traditional foreign policy
establishment—Morris had earlier mentioned Scowcroft and Brzezinski as
opponents of the neocons.

What Chomsky said pertaining to the neocons being the leading force
for the Iraq war is essentially identical to my position in “The
Transparent Cabal.” And it is not only the opposite of what it appeared
that he used to hold but what his protégé Norman Finkelstein continues
to expound, as I discuss in my article, “Norman Finkelstein and Neocon Denial.”

Finkelstein denies that the neocons were a factor in causing the U.S.
to go to war—and has nothing to do with my book, describing it as
conspiracist—but he does not seem to realize that his position contrasts
with that of his mentor. Since the two are quite close, it would seem
that Chomsky has not even expressed this new view to Finkelstein in
private conversation. When Finkelstein finds out that his mentor holds
that the neocons were the “dominant force” for war with Iraq, one
wonders if he will then charge him with believing in a conspiracy.

Unfortunately, however, Chomsky still stops far short of the full
truth. For in his response to Morris, he went on to maintain that the
neocons are different from the Israel lobby—definitely implying, though
not explicitly stating, that the neocons are not motivated by the
interests of Israel. He quickly put forth two arguments for this
contention. First, he claimed that the neocons are simply a mainstream
force in American conservatism going back to the Reagan administration.
Even if true, this would not necessarily preclude their being biased
in favor of Israel. However, it is not true—the neocons did not just
fit into existing mainstream conservatism, but altered it to fit their
own goals.

As I bring out in “The Transparent Cabal” (with numerous citations
from secondary sources, this being a rather conventional view), the
neocon movement originated among liberal Democrats, mainly Jewish, who
gravitated to the right in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In
significant part, this reflected a concern that American liberalism was
moving leftward in ways detrimental to Jewish interests. In foreign
policy, this involved diminished support by American liberals for
Israel—in line with the world left’s support for Third World movements
that included the Palestinians—and the liberals’ turn against an
anti-Communist foreign policy, as a reaction to the Vietnam imbroglio,
at a time when the Soviet Union’s policies were exhibiting
discrimination against Soviet Jewry and opposition to Israel in support
of its Arab enemies. In opposing what they saw as liberalism’s move to
the left, these proto-neoconservatives did not see themselves as
becoming conservative, but were dubbed with the moniker
“neoconservative” by left-wing social critic Michael Harrington, who
intended it as a pejorative term, and the name soon stuck.

Neoconservatives basically wanted to return mainstream American
liberalism to the anti-Communist Cold War positions exemplified by
President Harry Truman (1945–1953), which had held sway through the
administration of Lyndon B. Johnson (1963–1969). When this effort failed
to achieve success, neocons would turn to Ronald Reagan in the 1980.
Despite being newcomers to the conservative camp, neoconservatives were
able to find significant places in the Reagan administration, especially
in the national security and foreign policy areas, although at less
than Cabinet-level status.

Neoconservatives, however, did not become traditional conservatives,
but instead altered the content of conservatism to their liking. “The
neoconservative impulse,” pro-neocon Murray Friedman maintains in his
book “The Neoconservative Revolution,” “was the spontaneous response of a
group of liberal intellectuals, mainly Jewish, who sought to shape a
perspective of their own while standing apart from more traditional
forms of conservatism.”[Quoted in “Transparent Cabal,” pp. 39-40]

In domestic policy, neoconservatives supported the modern welfare
state, in contrast to the traditional conservatives, who emphasized
small government, states’ rights, and relatively unfettered capitalism.
Most importantly, they differed significantly from the conservative
position on foreign policy. Although the American conservatives of the
Cold War era were anti-Communist and pro-military, they harbored a
strain of isolationism. Their interventionism was limited largely to
fighting Communism, but not to nation-building and the export of
democracy, the expressed goals of the neocons. Nor did traditional
conservatives view the United States as the policeman of the world.
Most significantly, traditional conservatives had never championed
Israel.

While traditional conservatives welcomed neoconservatives as allies
in their fight against Soviet Communism and domestic liberalism, the
neocons in effect acted as a Trojan Horse within conservatism: they
managed to secure dominant positions in the conservative political and
intellectual movement, and as soon as they gained power, they purged
those traditional conservatives who opposed their agenda, particularly
as it involved Israel. Support for Israel and its policies had become,
and remains, a veritable litmus test for being a member of the
multitudinous political action groups and think tanks that comprise the
conservative movement.

In his 1996 book, “The Essential Neoconservative Reader,” editor Mark
Gerson, a neocon himself who served on the board of directors of the
Project for the New American Century, jubilantly observed: “The
neoconservatives have so changed conservatism that what we now identify
as conservatism is largely what was once neoconservatism. And in so
doing, they have defined the way that vast numbers of Americans view
their economy, their polity, and their society.” [Quoted in “Transparent
Cabal”, p. 42]

While in domestic policy Gerson’s analysis might not be completely
accurate, it would seem to be so in US national security policy, as
illustrated by the near unanimous Republican opposition in the US Senate
to the nomination of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense because of his
past statements critical of both US all-out support for Israel and its
hardline position toward Iran (currently Israel’s foremost enemy) that
might lead to war.

Now the fact that Cheney and Rumsfeld may not be motivated by a
desire to aid Israel in their support for neocon Middle East policy, the
Middle East policies they have supported have been formulated by those
who identify with Israel. Since both of them have been closely
associated with the neocons, Cheney more so than Rumsfeld, they were
undoubtedly influenced by the pro-Israel neocons. Cheney even went so
far as to serve on JINSA’s Advisory Board. And JINSA was set up in 1976 to put “the U.S.-Israel strategic relationship first.”

Moreover, as Vice President, Cheney specifically relied on advice
from the eminent historian of the Middle East, Bernard Lewis, a
right-wing Zionist and one of the neocons’ foremost gurus, who strongly
advocated war against Iraq and other Middle Eastern states. (Barton
Gellman, “Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency,” p. 231) Chomsky has said
that “Bernard Lewis is nothing but a vile propagandist,” and he
presumably means a propagandist for Israel.

The influence of ideas per se was not the only factor that likely
motivated Cheney. The fact that Cheney and his wife, Lynne, who was with
the American Enterprise Institute (AEI—known as “neocon central”), had
close personal and professional relations with the neocons also would
have predisposed him to give his support to the neoconservatives and
their agenda.

The same arguments would apply for Rumsfeld, with one additional one:
a war on Iraq would give him the chance to demonstrate the value of his
concept of a smaller, mobile, high tech American military. Rumsfeld
held that a small, streamlined invasion force would be sufficient to
defeat Iraq. As Bob Woodward writes in his book, “State of Denial”:
“The Iraq war plan was the chess board on which Rumsfeld would test,
develop, expand and modify his ideas about military transformation. And
the driving concept was ‘less is more’ – new thinking about a lighter,
swifter, smaller force that could do the job better. Rumsfeld’s
blitzkrieg would vindicate his leadership of the Pentagon.”[“State of
Denial,” p. 82]

For the neocons, Rumsfeld’s approach would not have the drawbacks of
the conventional full-scale invasion initially sought by the military
brass. The neocons feared that no neighboring country would provide the
necessary bases from which to launch such a massive conventional attack,
or that during the lengthy time period needed to assemble a large
force, diplomacy might avert war or that peace forces in the U.S. might
increase their size and political clout and do likewise. In short, it
was this convergence on interests between the Rumsfeld and the neocons
that made them so supportive of each other in the early years of the
George W. Bush administration.

It must be acknowledged that the neocon Middle East war agenda did
resonate with both Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s general positions on national
security policy, but there is little reason to think that they would
have come up with the specifics of the policy, including even the
identification of Iraq as the target, if it had not been for their
neocon associates, whose policy reflected their close identification
with Israel. It should also be pointed out that in Chomsky’s usual
presentation of an American foreign policy shaped by the corporate
elite, the actual government officials who implemented the policy were
not necessarily members of the corporate elite nor motivated by a desire
to advance the interests of the corporate elite as opposed to the
national interest of the United States. In order for any type of elite
to be successful, it is essential that it attract significant numbers of
people outside of itself, which Chomsky himself has discussed at length
regarding the corporate elite. This is also the very purpose of the
neoconservative network and the information that it disseminates.

Acknowledging as much as he did, it is hard to see how Chomsky can
fail to discern that the neocons identify with Israel. The evidence is
overwhelming. The following are a few examples of this connection.

The effort to prevent Chuck Hagel from becoming the Secretary of
Defense has been spearheaded by the Emergency Committee for Israel, the
creation of which in 2010 was in large part the work of leading neocon,
Bill Kristol, and which claims “to provide citizens with the facts they
need to be sure that their public officials are supporting a strong
U.S.-Israel relationship.” As Bill Kristol states: “We’re the
pro-Israel wing of the pro-Israel community.” Kristol had co-founded
the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which promoted the war
on Iraq. Kristol’s father, the late Irving Kristol, a godfather of
neoconservatism, is noted for his identification with Israel. In 1973,
he said: “Jews don’t like big military budgets. But it is now an
interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment
in the United States . . . American Jews who care about the survival of
the state of Israel have to say, no, we don’t want to cut the military
budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can
defend Israel.” [Congress Bi-Weekly (1973), published by the American
Jewish Congress]

Noah Pollak, a contributor to “Commentary” magazine, is the Emergency
Committee’s executive director and, while living in Israel for two
years, was an assistant editor at the Jerusalem-based Shalem Center.

Eliot Cohen, a veteran neocon, was a founding signatory of the
Project for the New American Century and advised the Committee for the
Liberation of Iraq. He coined the term “World War IV” for the war on
terror. During the George Bush administration, he served on the Defense
Policy Board in Bush’s first term and was closely affiliated with those
neocons around Vice President Cheney. He is on the International
Academic Advisory Board of the Began Sadat Center for Strategic Studies
in Israel, which is affiliated with Bar Ilan University, and is involved
in contract work for the Israeli government.

Douglas Feith, who as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in
George W. Bush’s first term set up and controlled the Office of Special
Plans, which spread the most specious war propaganda, was closely
associated with the right-wing Zionist group, the Zionist Organization
of America. In 1997, he co-founded One Jerusalem, a group whose
objective was “saving a united Jerusalem as the undivided capital of
Israel.” Before entering the Bush administration, Feith ran a small
Washington-based law firm, which had one international office – in
Israel. And the majority of the firm’s work consisted of representing
Israeli interests.

Richard Perle has had very close personal connections with Israeli
government officials, and has been accused of providing classified
information to that country on a number of occasions. Perle not only
expounded pro-Zionist views, but was a board member of the pro-Likud
“Jerusalem Post” and had worked as a lobbyist for the Israeli weapons
manufacturer Soltam.

Norman Podhoretz is considered a godfather, along with Irving
Kristol, of the neoconservative movement. When editor of “Commentary”
magazine, he wrote that “the formative question for his politics would
heretofore be, ‘Is it good for the Jews?’” (“Commentary,” February 1972)
In 2007, Podhoretz received the Guardian of Zion Award, which is given
to individuals for their support for Israel, from Bar-Ilan University
in Israel. Neocon Charles Krauthammer was the 2002 winner of the
Guardian of Zion Award.

Max Singer, co-founder of the neocon Hudson Institute and its former
president, who pushed for the war on Iraq, has moved to Israel, where he
is a citizen and has been involved with the Institute for Zionist
Strategies, which advocates the need to better infuse Zionist ideology
in the Jewish people of Israel.

The neocons’ support for Israel does not necessarily mean that they
were deliberately promoting the interest of Israel at the expense of the
United States. Instead, as I point out in “The Transparent Cabal,” they
maintained that an identity of interests existed between the two
countries – Israel’s enemies being ipso facto America’s enemies.
However, it is apparent from their backgrounds that the neoconservatives
viewed American foreign policy in the Middle East through the lens of
Israeli interest, as Israeli interest was perceived by the Likudniks.

Despite this professed view of the identity of American and Israel
interests, sometimes the neocons’ actions verged on putting Israel
interests above those of the United States government. For example,
some leading neocons—David Wurmser, Richard Perle, and Douglas
Feith—developed the “Clean Break” proposal outlining an aggressive
policy for Israel intended to enhance its geostrategic position, which
they presented in 1996 to then-incoming Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu. One part of the plan was to get the United States to
disassociate itself from peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine
and simply let Israel treat the Palestinians as it saw fit. “Israel,”
stated the report, “can manage it’s own affairs. Such self-reliance will
grant Israel greater freedom of action and remove a significant lever
of [US] pressure used against it in the past.” It was highly noteworthy
that the neocons would devise a strategy to enable Israel to become free
from adhering to the goals of their own country. [“Transparent Cabal,”
p. 93]

In conclusion, while Chomsky’s change was far from being complete,
his acknowledgement that that the neoconservatives were the “dominant
force” in driving the U.S. to the war on Iraq in 2003 is, nonetheless,
very significant. Chomsky, who was voted the “world’s top public
intellectual” in a 2005 poll, certainly influences many people, most
particularly on the anti-war left, and his new view should make them
rethink their belief that the war was all about oil. It is to be hoped
that Chomsky’s words were not a one-time aberration and that he will not
revert to his previous publicly-espoused position. Rather, it is to be
hoped that he will now look more deeply into the neocons’ activities
and thus discern their close connection to Israel.

Stephen J. Sniegoski is the author of The Transparent Cabal: The
Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National
Interest of Israel. He contributed this article to The Passionate
Attachment.

In the immediate hours and days after the September 11 attacks, propagandist chiefs Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak, all appeared on television to put out their twisted narrative that Islamic extremists were responsible for the tragedy, without providing any evidence for their assertions.

New
York money is not only playing a big part in 2008 presidential campaign
politics, but it's also a driving force behind the ongoing push by
pro-Israel fanatics at the highest levels of U.S. policy-making to force
the United States into a senseless war against Iran.

That's
the only conclusion that can be reached based on a survey of multiple
and wide-ranging news reports—circulating largely within publications in
Israel and in the American Jewish community—that have not been brought
to the attention of most Americans through the aegis of the so-called
"mainstream media."

It's almost as
if the major media in America is simply determined to prevent average
Americans from knowing that there are some people who believe that
Israel and its well-heeled backers in the United States are the primary
advocates for U.S. military action against Iran.

Perhaps
the most explosive comments in this regard came from Gen. Wesley Clark
(ret.), who was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination
in 2004 and who—until then, at least—was considered a likely candidate
for the Democratic nod in 2008. In an interview with columnist Arianna
Huffington, Clark said that he believed that the Bush administration is
determined to wage war against Iran. When asked why he believed this,
Clark said:

You
just have to read what's in the Israeli press. The Jewish community is
divided but there is so much pressure being channeled from the New York
money people to the office seekers.

In
short, Clark was saying that powerful New York-based financial
interests (those whom he called "the New York money people") are putting
pressure on political candidates and incumbent politicians to support a
war against Iran.

In fact, Clark
was correct. Jewish community newspapers have indeed noted, time and
again over the past several years, that many in the American Jewish
community and in Israel are urging U.S. military action against Iran.
And in Israel, of course, the bellicose talk of Israel itself attacking
Iran is commonly and publicly discussed with free abandon. All of this
is little known to the American public.

Despite
this, Clark came under fire and was accused of "anti- Semitism" or
otherwise charged with lending credence to what are dismissed as
"anti-Israel and anti- Jewish conspiracy theories," which—Clark's angry
critics said—suggest that Israel and its supporters are prime movers
behind the drive for war.

Because
Clark is the son of a Jewish father (although he didn't know that until
several years ago, having been raised by a Christian mother and a
Christian step-father who never told Clark of his Jewish heritage), some
Jewish leaders were pulling their punches, recognizing that it sounded
somewhat outlandish to call Clark "anti-Jewish." But the word is
definitely out in the Jewish community: "Clark can't be trusted."

On
Jan. 12,2007, the New York-based Jewish newspaper, Forward, carried a
front-page story zinging Clark for his remarks, noting that,"The phrase
New York money people' struck unpleasant chords with many pro- Israel
activists. They interpreted it as referring to the Jewish community,
which is known for its significant financial donations to political
candidates."

The fact that Jewish
leaders and publications were attacking Clark for using the term "New
York money people" was ironic, inasmuch as just the week before the
furor over Clark's comments, the same Forward, in its own Jan. 5, 2007
issue, had a front-page story announcing that pro-Israel stalwart U.S.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had lined up significant financial support
for his own 2008 presidential campaign from those whom—in its own
headline—Forward called "New York money men."

In
that revealing article, describing McCain's "heavily Jewish finance
committee," Forward announced that, in recent weeks, "McCain has been
signaling that an attention to Jewish issues will remain on his agenda
as his campaign moves forward." The Jewish newspaper did not mention
whether McCain will direct any attention to Christian, Muslim, Buddhist
or Hindu issues—or any other issues of concern to other religious
groups.

The article in Forward made
it clear that support from these "New York money men" is critical in the
forthcoming presidential campaign and that it could be pivotal, whether
that money stays in McCain's camp or ultimately goes elsewhere.

This
information could prove a surprise to grass-roots Republicans all over
America who think (apparently incorrectly) that they are the ones who
actually pick their party's presidential nominee.

In
addition, in light of the fact that Jewish groups attacked Clark for
suggesting that "New York money people" were pressuring political
candidates to push for war against Iran, it is interesting to note that
Forward pointed out that one of the key "New York money men" supporting
McCain cited the issue of Iran as one of the reasons why he was boosting
the Arizona senator.

Dr. Ben
Chouake, who is president of the pro-Israel NORPAC, a political action
committee, and a member of McCain's finance committee, was cited as
having remarked that Iran is "an immense threat to the United States,
and this is an immense threat to Israel," and that "the person that is
the most capable, most experienced, most courageous to defend our
country, would be John McCain."

Clearly,
the "New York money people" are playing a major part in the American
political arena, throwing their weight behind who gets elected— and who
doesn't—and whether or not America goes to war.

That's something that Americans need to know about, but they had better not count on the mass media to tell them about it.

JINSA DEFECTIONS: After canning a longtime staffer, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs lost several of its most prominent advisory board members, including former CIA chief James Woolsey and former Pentagon official Richard Perle.

A Word From Sgt. Raymond Turner, USA

"If I were the 'Stalin of America' most of our govt and media would be shot for treason or sent off to a FEMA camp or put to work on infrastructure projects. AIPAC and the Rothschild’s Federal Reserve would be no more. The debt would be erased over night. Lobbies and all political donations outlawed. MOSSAD agents in America would be shot on sight. And if Israel didn’t like it, some of our 81 nuclear attack subs and 11 carriers would finally be put to good use.John Hagee would simply be put on a starvation diet. Pam Geller sent to a concubinage in Saudi Arabia. Alan Dershowitz and Joe Lieberman parachuted into Afghanistan wearing IDF officer’s uniforms and MOSSAD ID. George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld taken to Nevada and tied feet-first to wild stallions. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh cast adrift on a life raft in the western Atlantic at 20 degrees north in the middle of Hurricane season. The entire lot of neo-cons involved in 9-11 would be loaded onto a remote control jet with just enough fuel to make it 500 miles off the east coast at 30,000′. These are only a few of the just ends for the traitorous agents of Israel.This country would be cleaned up in short order."Sgt. Raymond Turner, USA